Want to Accomplish More? Do Less.
As my one of my favorite philosophers once said, the less you do the more you do. And yes, said philosopher happens to be Kunu the surfer from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But that guy was a seriously chilled out dude, so maybe it’s not so crazy to take some life advice from him.
Everywhere we look these days, people are stressed the F* out. They are so distracted that you could be telling them that you are dying from radiation by UFO and you’d likely be greeted with a blank stare and an “oh wow that’s craaaazy” auto-response back.
There is so much crap being thrown us at every second that without a strategy to process it all, our minds are constantly exhausted. You may think you are only spending two minutes checking Instagram but in the back of your mind there is a subconscious story playing out about how everyone else is having more, being more, or doing more. So we put a ton of pressure on ourselves to do the same.
Even the ways we want to relax these days has become stressful. We are inundated with top ten lists and everyone is looking for the best, biggest, fastest or any other est they can come up with. And strangely, if you are actually happy and content (meaning happy with what you already have) you are labeled as a space cadet, lacking ambition, a socialist or down right un-American. I’ve even heard people saying that the planning of a vacation is so stressful that it isn’t even worth going on.
How to Accomplish More by Doing Less
When we run through our mental lists of all the things we have to do, want to do and should be doing….well the list is then pretty much never ending.
So we are inevitably faced with feelings of being overwhelmed, burnt out and exhausted. And then pretty soon we are 3 hours deep into an Office marathon stuffing our face with chocolate just to avoid it all. Going back to our trusty old friend Kunu…let’s collectively make a decision to DO LESS and feel damn good about it.
How does that look? Let’s get into it!
Do Really Need to do the Task?
This one sounds super simple. But it can be surprisingly difficult to implement. One of my favorite productivity hackers and overall lifestyle design heroes, Tim Ferris, offered a simple tip in an interview which really hit home for me. He says to ask yourself at the start of each day “what do I need to do” and “does it really need to be done?”.
It is hard to admit that there are tasks that you may WANT to get done but do not actually NEED to get done to accomplish your long term goals. Maybe an example is re-organizing your files or following up on some sales calls for low yielding customers. Or maybe it’s doing a cost benefit analysis on whether waiting on hold with a credit card company to reverse a charge of $22? Is it worth it or is it a time suck? Is it just busy work that’s distracting you from scarier and more important goals?
If task over-load is a consistent struggle for you, use the 5/25 rule to prioritize what’s truly important - and put the rest on the back burner.
The key to any technique focused on doing less is to figure out the difference between what you should do (often based on guilt) and what you need to do - and be ruthless with your designations.
2. Delegate Your Tasks
People who want to do more often struggle with the belief that it’s possible to do everything. I find this is especially true of mothers who feel guilty asking for help in any arena because there is so much pressure on them to be on top of everything. While the ethos is admirable, it can be really detrimental to our overall well being. It promotes the idea that it is a failure to rely on others. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Knowing how much you can handle is the best way to actually be more productive with your time because it allows you to conserve your energy for the most important tasks. And the rest of it?
Leverage your community, co-workers, employees and family to take tasks off your plate. Delegate strategically by taking time to identify your shared goals, and celebrate the wins together to generate momentum.
This not only lightens your load, it empowers the members of your team or family to be responsible for the end goal as much as you are. This ultimately helps move everyone forward.
This is one of the major reasons that we highlighted group collaboration as a central component of Simplish. We wanted to focus on your dream teams first so that the work gets done instead of your own task lists getting infinitely longer in a vacuum.
3. Celebrate Small Steps in the Right Direction
The small victories that add up.
I realized that one of my biggest issues with my old task list was my own fault. I would constantly put in things like — Finish e-book — and then stare it day after day feeling demoralized that I wasn’t able to cross it off. When I started to change my habits and actually put in bite sized DOABLE tasks like — write for 30 minutes — I saw tremendous improvement. Sure it’s a lot juicier to cross off something monumental on your list. But actually using your to do list to create task milestones allowed me to get closer to my goal the best way — day by day and step by step.
Bottom line — be kinder to yourself, make baby steps, and get rid of things bogging you down from your real goals.
And sit back and enjoy having more free time. Because as another famous philosopher wisely said.
