Now vs. "IMMINENT"
Through my consulting, through sharing/collaboration on Ops calls with friends, and observing my own system, I've found something that is utterly hostile to success.
It's evil and wretched, broken, seductive and conniving, and leads on the path to ruin.
It has the heart of pure darkness, the most viciousness of all the ages combined, and with a voice as sweet as the sirens beckoning you to the rocks.
It's really, really bad.
And it seems not-so-bad, which makes it all the more nefarious.
Are you ready for it? Stop and think this through after I mention it, slow down a bit and think this over… are you ready?
It's having too many things to-do as "now" or "today."
You see this frequently with busy people who try to get organized -- and then wind up with 20, 30, 50, or 100 things under "do right now"... some of them dating back many months.
In my own pending actions, I have 49 items listed under do-right-now. Many of these items would take over an hour to do… it's literally mathematically impossible to do all 49 of these in a single day.
This is particularly bad and ugly because it means you're marking up each day as at least a partial "Loss," because your "do-today" never gets done. It's horrible for morale.
Worse still, things risk falling through the cracks. When you have 49 one-hour-long things to do "today," you actually have no things that actually need to get done today.
You train yourself to not respect your own deadlines, and not really prioritize.
(Some people sort of hack this by having "do right now" be a general file on a computer, and using paper or post-it notes for what actually has to be done right now.)
So, on this topic, I have recognized the problem but don't have a perfect answer.
My first crack at solving this: it's actually not to demote things from "Now" into lower categories of priority.
It's to create a new category -- imminent. Anything in "Imminent" means it should be happening immediately and must be done before I sleep.
And I'll use this category sparingly. Things cannot be added to it until other things on it are cleared out. If I'm generating more imminently required activity than I'm clearing out, I need to slow down, rethink how I do things, or hire someone.
And you, too.
How many things are on your "do right now" list?
You need to get that "do right now" list down below what can be done in a reasonable day, and only to things that actually have to be done right now.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some work that's imminently due.