Admitting defeat does not mean surrendering your priorities. It means being honest with yourself about what they are and building a tolerance for the pain of neglecting other things. One technique is to have a two-to-do list system: a master list with everything you want or need to do, and a short list with only five slots. You can only add something new to the short list once you have completed one task. This creates a bottleneck in your workflow and helps you realize that you were already making most things wait while you focused on one task. Setting achievable low-level goals for a day or a few hours of work can be helpful in creative work like writing.
Joey is a young creative living in Australia who can’t decide which hat to wear. Should it be songwriting, skateboarding, acting, or should he focus more on his day job as a retail clerk? Fitting everything in during the week seems impossible and he feels guilty when he can’t cross everything off his checklist. On this episode of How To!, co-host Amanda Ripley brings in journalist Oliver Burkeman, the author of 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. He explains how he too once wanted to do it all, but eventually realized that it’s just not feasible. As Joey learns, letting go of some things and focusing on what really matters can actually lead to the ‘joy of missing out.’
If you liked this episode, check out: “How To Never Miss a Deadline”
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