It’s currently the season of Lent, leading up to Easter. In Christian tradition, this is a period of fasting and personal reflection. Regardless of your faith tradition or lack thereof, this is a good time (because any time is a good time) to consider whether there may be some things in your life that you could do without.
I don’t mean this in a “you could get along without them if you had to, even though they’re basically good” sense. There are probably – almost certainly – things in your life that make no positive contribution and that could be removed without loss. There are also likely to be things that make an overall negative contribution, that you’d be actively better off if you didn’t have.
photo credit: Hello Turkey Toe
I recently read a thought-provoking post by Jeff Sexton, a copywriting blogger, called Lenten Thoughts on Ash Wednesday. (Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and it was last week.) He mentions the popular “Getting Things Done” approach. His criticism of this approach is that it requires you to start out by getting to the point that you want to stay at, the point of being completely organized. That triggered off the idea for this post: What about spending some time “Getting Things Undone”?
Take some time right now to reflect. Get a piece of paper and draw a line vertically down the middle. Now, on the left, note down the first few things that come to mind that are in your life, taking time, energy, space, perhaps even money, but not really contributing anything. These could be physical clutter (things you don’t use but that are in your way or taking up storage space), mental or emotional clutter (things you worry about that you can’t do anything about), or “activity clutter”, things you keep doing because you said you would, or out of habit, even though there’s no real benefit coming out of doing them.
In the right column of the piece of paper, write down anything that is in your life that does more harm than good and that you’d like to be rid of.
This is your “To Undo” list.
Your mission, between now and Easter, is to start undoing those things and removing them from your life.
Now, I know (because I’m a hypnotherapist, and people come to me for help to undo their habits) that it can be difficult to undo things, especially things that have been there long-term. Start with a few easy ones and build up some momentum. If there are some that you know will be particularly challenging, get some help with them, just as you would with a challenging “To Do” item.
Some resources that might help you are on my Courses page.
I’ve recently come to realize that there are three key principles which underly all true success. Here they are:
1. Start doing what you want to succeed at.
2. Pay attention and learn from what works, what doesn’t work, and the experiences of others who’ve gone before you.
3. Keep doing it until you succeed.
The principles of failure, of course, are exactly the reverse of these. But there’s a kind of silent zeroth principle that weaves in between those three: Undo what is hindering you.
Is this your time to start getting things undone?
Technorati Tags: GTD, getting things done, Lent, uncluttering, success
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