There is an Elon Musk quote that I can't stop thinking about and it is at the center of what Not Doing List is all about. Check it out. Below is an idea for how it can inform your #NDL going forward.
You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of the problems you solve.
- Elon Musk
What if there was a better approach to managing your time and energy that started with analyzing the problems you're solving?
Try this:
Write down every business problem you spend time trying to solve for your organization next week. What broken things did you fix? What inefficiencies did you correct? What new opportunities did you spot to meet a customer need?
At the end of each day, take two minutes and make this list. You don't have to have solved the problems. Just write down the problems that received your most precious asset: time.
Look at the collective list of problems you worked on at the end of the week. Ask yourself: are these the largest and hardest things my skills can really tackle? ...or are there bigger problems you can solve and have a larger impact on your organization?
If you're burning time solving too many low-value problems, then you need to shift your time. Use this self-reflection to spot things you should NOT spend time on in the week ahead.
What can you add to your #NDL so that you free up time to work on harder problems that are more mission critical to your organization?