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It was early January 2007 and I was, once again, belatedly making a list of resolutions.  Not only had I missed the well-marked annual deadline, I was doing a pretty half-assed job of making them. I was searching for resolution ideas on the Internet. No joke. But I was lucked out. I stumbled upon a great article that not only changed my resolutions for 2007…it changed the way I pretty much lived my life.

It’s called “The Best New Year’s Resolution? A ‘Stop Doing’ List” by author and management guru-type Jim Collins (link). After a quick read I realized that I was guilty of trying to do too much. In fact, I was not only doing a lot of things that weren’t important to me…but also doing my important things in a half-assed way.  I drew up my list, cut out the activities I didn’t need and got down to making real change in my life. Here’s how.

Easier, Not Better
First, some background. Technology and the world around us have conspired to make things easier to do. Want to check email? Need to make a call? Phones and computers are in your pocket, on your computer, and even stuck in your ear. I can find almost anyone that went to my high school and I can track what Shaquille O’Neal does by the minute via Twitter…all in just a few clicks.  Thanks to Google and Wikipedia I can learn about any topic almost instantly; or at least I can learn what’s the most popularly-held view of that topic.

Organizing, Not Acting
With so much floating around, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to make sense of it all.  I had systems and programs; I owned gadgets and devices; everything was synced and linked in a massive attempt at trying to capture everything and put it on a list,  put it in a place that made sense.  I had more lists than I could keep track of.  Every thing I did led to a few more tasks being generated.  I feel behind as I was making “progress”.  In other words, trying to make sense of everything no longer made any sense at all.

Learning to Let Go
Switching gears from Starting things to Stopping things meant a fundamental transition.  I had to be prepared to lose control of some areas of my life in order to gain what I truly wanted. In some cases I had to let go of the things that were easiest to control. Case in point, I was an email junkie. I loved getting, sending, and organizing my email into endless folders, tag combinations and more. It was clear after I read about the Stop Doing list that “emailing for the sake of emailing” just had to go.

Once I got the ball rolling, the fact that I was doing what I really wanted made the “stopping” very rewarding…but that was only in hindsight. Turns out that the hardest part of this transition was taking the first step. The results I got made it immediately clear that this new approach was effective. Now I am a “stop” junkie. Know this: If you can grasp that the wall you see in front of you is largely a part of your imagination, a fear borne from the uncertainy of change alone, then the only real roadblock you are left with is….you.

My Time is Finite…My Goals (Now) Are Too
At the end of the day we all only have so much bandwidth to do what we want and need to do.   Stopping one thing can really allows us to do something new…or something else better than before. Here are three quick examples from my journey:

•    I wanted to read more — so I stopped watching TV.
•    I wanted to write more — so I stopped frequent, pointless browsing of the Web.
•    I wanted to run a successful business — so I stopped working for others and only worked for myself.

Far from rocket science for sure, but truly powerful stuff regardless. As you consider your own personal transformation, I encourage you to follow these quick steps:

1    Identify Top Three Goals & Related Activities
2    Analyze current work habits in relation to state goals (see #1)
3    Review analysis; Everything that doesnt’ contribute to your goal should be considered suspect and subject to review
4    Simplify and Execute

Conclusion
Creating my Stop Doing list empowered me to shut down large parts of my life that really weren’t part of anything important to me. And shutting those things down means I can now spend more time on what truly matters to me.

If you listen to the pundits, you know that things will only be getting more accessible, more connected, and much faster, in the years to come.  Your might shudder to think of that day, but I say “Bring It” — I am totally focused and ready to go.
Resources:
•    Stop Doing Article by Jim Collins (http://www.jimcollins.com/lib/articles/12_03.html)
•    RescueTime (http://www.rescuetime.com/) — Use this to analyze your time spent online, contrast real time spend vs desired time spend

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Note: Stay tuned for a post later this week on what this approach has to do with endurance fitness…or you can follow my thought stream over on Twitter by following @pmccrann.

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