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Pick a Place to Start

EVERY JANUARY 1 we engage in the long-standing ritual of making our New Year’s resolutions. Some of us actually write them down; others just commit them to memory. In addition, some of us postpone the exercise indefinitely despite our best intentions. But all of us go through the process of at least thinking about what we should put on the list of goals we hope to accomplish in the coming year. Historical favorites include losing weight, earning more money, getting a different job, making new friends, creating greater work-life balance, putting old photos into a scrapbook, eating healthier foods, taking a longer vacation, exercising more, and procrastinating less.

The problem of course with most of our “to do” lists—whether they include our yearly resolutions, tasks at work, or things we need to get done around the house—is that we put too much on them. It’s not too long before the stark realization sets in: we may never get everything done. This can be overwhelming and ultimately lead to feelings of regret if we don’t complete the entire list or if we don’t give it our best effort because we are trying to do too many things at once. Regret may also be the result if we spend so much time overanalyzing how to get it all done that we wind up getting little or nothing done.

So where do we start? Several years ago a man named Lee Staggert called me about getting some personal coaching on how to better organize his life. Specifically, he wanted to increase his effectiveness in accomplishing his daily tasks so he could focus more on working toward his goals for the future. Lee was the type of person who was used to feeling like he could accomplish anything he set out to do, but lately he had been falling behind. As an example, he was receiving over one hundred e-mails a day and getting to only the ten or so that were the highest priority. The rest of them just sat in his in-box and accumulated throughout the month, leaving him with literally thousands of unopened e-mails that he’d purge on the first of the next month in order to give himself the illusion of a fresh start. Clearly this did not solve the problem and was only making it worse.

Beyond that, Lee was up against the clock to fill two vacant positions in his office in the midst of trying to grow a new business venture. He was also required to attend a barrage of daily meetings, which just sucked up more of his time. Finally, he was finding less and less quality time to spend with his family since each night he brought home work that he couldn’t get done at the office. It may come as no surprise that Lee was stressed, overwhelmed, and frustrated.

My counsel to Lee was simple: “Pick a place to start,” I said. “Choose one thing on your ‘to do’ list that will be a big source of regret for you until it gets resolved.”

“What about all the rest?” Lee asked.

“It’s not like you’re going to forget about the other items on the list,” I reassured him. “You’re just going to find a starting point where you’ll put the greatest focus for the time being. The problem right now is that you’ve got so much on your list, you don’t know where to begin.”

While Lee wasn’t completely sold on my advice, he said he’d give it a try and chose to start with e-mails. His initial goal was to cut his end-of-month unopened e-mail load in half by setting aside “e-mail elimination time” twice a week for one hour a shot. In just four weeks, however, Lee wound up reducing his unopened e-mails by 70 percent. By the end of the following month, he was down 85 percent! Becoming more efficient at managing his e-mail load also allowed him to spend more time targeting the next items on the list. It wasn’t long before he had freed himself from the regret of feeling ineffective and overwhelmed.

It’s better to do one thing well as opposed to a lot of things poorly. When tackling your own “to do” list, don’t try to take it all on at once. Instead, consider which item on the list will give you the greatest sense of satisfaction and return on your time investment once addressed. Then choose a starting point so you can begin working toward success. This will help you feel energized because you’ll have a strategy in place for moving forward. Pick a place to start and you will no longer feel stuck.

Pick a place to
start and you will
no longer feel stuck.

∼ What does your current “to do” list look like?

∼ If you had to pick a place to start, which item on the list would you choose and why?