Say no in the New Year!
If you want to start something new, you have to stop doing something old.
— Peter Drucker
If you’re like most people, you’re working on a list of resolutions for 2017: Eat healthy. Go to the gym more. Make time for that breakthrough idea.
But Drucker would have likely asked you for a different kind of list: What are you going to stop doing?
“The job is…not to set priorities,” Drucker wrote. “That is easy. Everybody can do it. The reason why so few executives concentrate is the difficulty of setting ‘posteriorities’—that is, deciding what tasks not to tackle—and of sticking to the decision.”
MAKE YOUR NOT-TO-DO LIST
What meetings could I cancel that no one would miss?
What do I do regularly that could be done just as well, if not better, by someone else?
What do I do that takes up other people’s time without contributing to their effectiveness?