Your Stop List
It’s not hard to find more things to add to your already creaking and overloaded to-do list
When was the last time you chose some things to stop doing?
Audiences across 6 different countries in many sectors and all levels over the past couple of weeks.
One common pattern: serious overload (the data backs this up - see link below).
We can’t slow the pace of change, but we can use tools to manage that change better.
Change has been my lifetime’s work, and it’s the spine of the Change Ready talk and program.
I’ve got one simple idea this week.
A stop list.
I implemented this some time back when I was working simultaneously on two huge goals of business transformation and family transformation.
The bones of the idea are these
I categorised my time as one of four things:
£1m an hour activity, £1,000 an hour activity, £100 an hour activity and £10 an hour activity.
You might only spend 5 minutes a week doing £1m an hour activity - it could look like a strategic decision, a key conversation with a team member, a feedback moment which changes the trajectory of what you’re doing, an important sales or business development moment.
These are the high value activities you want to maximise.
At the other end of the spectrum, what are the low value or no value activities that burn your time. Scrolling on social media, meetings that run on and that you don’t need to be there for, admin activities that could be deleted or automated.
You get the point right, it’s been conscious of what you actually spend time on.
I’ll bet that at the end of each day if you ran your mind over how you’ve spent your time today, you could stop doing a bunch of stuff and it would zero or close to zero impact.
I used to do this on the train home - it was called my 8020 review after the Pareto principle where 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. Or as might be more likely, that 99% of your results come from 1% of your activities.
As humans, we are habitual and tend to do what we did yesterday.
Which is exactly why this is so powerful when you can identity things to stop doing.
Two Minute Experiment
Run your mind over yesterday. What did you do that was really high value? Even if just for 5 minutes. What would be the impact if you spent 5 or 10 more minutes in that activity.
Five Minute Experiment
Identify where you are spending time doing £10 an hour activity. What difference would it make if you stopped doing it. Can someone else do it or just stop it altogether.
Ten Minute Experiment
The best way to learn something is to teach it. Share this idea with one other person and debate what one thing you can stop doing and what your highest value time is spent doing.
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