
Forget the ‘To-Do’ List, You Need a ‘Stop Doing’ List - jeremynixon
http://time.com/3724744/need-stop-doing-list/
======
sopooneo
"...it may be worth-while for you to remember that you have as much time as
anyone else — twenty-four hours a day".

I don't think this is fair. If you are poor and uneducated, you have to spend
more time working just to provide basic needs. So you _don 't_ have as much
time available as those who are better off.

~~~
Gustomaximus
Anyone that has kids doesn't has time-choice compared with those who don't.
I'd guess 3+ hours a day average, less weekdays and more on weekends.

Combine that with poor and there really isn't much time available outside
sleep.

~~~
steve_barham
They did have time-choice; they chose to allocate a substantial portion of it
to having children.

~~~
calibraxis
Not in a meaningful sense, given that the species should probably have a next
generation. It's work that needs to be done.

Society can make the work a lot less onerous, restoring that time-choice. (And
various societies through time had quite sensible solutions, though of course
war and violence destroys sensible living arrangements.) For instance, the
common atomized family is incredibly inefficient duplication of work.

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calinet6
Aside from the profound conclusions and hyperbolic examples, this is just some
darned practical advice taken at face value.

The value of focus is highly underrated. You don't need to do everything, and
often doing everything 'on your list' means you're not devoting the time you
should be to more important things; things that may not be on your list, or
may not even be listable, or might just be doing the things on your list
better. Devote yourself to focusing on one thing, shed the things that don't
matter, and you might find a quality of execution you never realized.

This is something I learned perhaps too late in my career so far. I feel I
would have advanced more and faster and achieved better results if I had
stopped doing things that weren't tightly focused—not only on what I needed,
but on what my company needed and what our customers needed.

~~~
rsync
The mantra I repeat to myself is "context switches are expensive". I've
internalized this across many different disciplines (whether the workings of a
CPU or the workings of my kids going to school) and even now, I need to repeat
those four words to myself quite frequently.

Context switches are expensive.

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thebear
"Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of
it, and others do just the same with their time." \- Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe

------
brongondwana
What annoys me about a lot of time management advice is the same thing that
annoys me about bucket lists. Acting as if the entire measure of the value of
your life is how "efficiently" you spend every second.

I totally agree about having a "stop doing" list, because that shit can eat up
your whole life on stuff that you didn't actually enjoy. But leaving space for
coincidence and serendipity is important too.

And doing useless things sometimes, so that when you DO need more time, you
have something left to give up that's not important to you. If you're already
maxed out with valuable uses of your time, there's no room to add something
else.

(crossover: decluttering and the "get rid of something before you add
something")

~~~
lmm
> And doing useless things sometimes, so that when you DO need more time, you
> have something left to give up that's not important to you. If you're
> already maxed out with valuable uses of your time, there's no room to add
> something else.

That makes no sense. At any given time you do the most valuable things
available. When something else comes up, either it's more valuable than the
least valuable thing you're currently doing - in which case great, you do it
instead of that - or it's not, in which case why would you want to do it?

When I found myself unexpectedly in a relationship I needed more time, so I
stopped doing taekwando and dropped out of my roleplaying campaign as soon as
there was a story-appropriate point to do so. Losing those things hurt, but I
knew I was replacing them with something better. If I'd instead been keeping n
nights a week free in case something comes up, what would I have gained? I'd
just have been less happy in the weeks before that.

------
barrkel
There's something ironic about the heavy emphasis on time coming from Time, a
magazine I typically associate with waiting rooms.

------
lqdc13
I am not sure if the logic makes sense for everyone.

If I had 10 years to live and got $20 million, I would immediately stop
working and start playing video games to get as much in as possible before I
die.

~~~
1_player
That's an interesting point of view... If I were in that situation, I would
STOP playing video games and writing software in exchange for money but invest
every last penny and energy in building something for people in need.

But probably that's the reason I'm much too often dreaming of dropping
everything, leaving to Africa to build schools. Too bad I'm a software
engineer.

I don't dream of playing video games, I already do it too much, but it's
interesting to know that someone does.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Instead of building schools in Africa, why not look towards my current heroes,
"one billion" who are building school apps and distributing them in Malawai
(just google university Nottingham trial too)

Not to put you off your dream, but it does strike me that buildings is doable
- really good teachers are much harder to source.

~~~
1_player
Didn't know about "onebillion"
([https://onebillion.org/](https://onebillion.org/)), thanks.

Building schools in Africa is a metaphor of my actual "volunteering" desire:
if I had infinite or just enough capital I would prefer to invest it in
infrastructure and technology: building renewable energy power plants,
internet connectivity to rural areas, research labs, etc.

Education is very important but most third world countries could benefit much
more from technological self-sufficiency and expertise.

------
nbaksalyar
"Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do." — John
Carmack

------
minikites
The last point ties in with the pg essay "What doesn't seem like work":
[http://paulgraham.com/work.html](http://paulgraham.com/work.html)

Following your "passion" is dumb, find something that you think is okay that
other people find unpleasant.

~~~
s3r3nity
I always loved Cal Newport's take on this - "'Follow Your Passion' is bad
advice"

[http://99u.com/videos/22339/cal-newport-follow-your-
passion-...](http://99u.com/videos/22339/cal-newport-follow-your-passion-is-
bad-advice)

------
raminassemi
Reminds me of Warren Buffett's "Avoid At All Cost" list or Steli's "Not To Do"
list: [http://blog.close.io/not-to-do-list](http://blog.close.io/not-to-do-
list)

------
thejerz
"I'm proud of the things we've done -- but I'm more proud of everything we
didn't do." \-- Steve Jobs

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moron4hire
I don't have deadlines for tasks. I have start times only. While that
technically means the start time of task #2 is essentially a deadline for task
#1, I find it a lot more motivating to think of it in this way. It keeps the
notion that not finishing today's task is preventing tomorrow's task from
starting at the front and center.

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smegel
To me, a To-Do list is just about prioritization.

'Stop Doing' the stuff at the bottom of the list.

------
glennericksen
Someone once told me that what we need are three lists. A to-do list, a stop
doing list, and a don't do list. I don't always end up with three lists, but
the principle serves me well.

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jqm
If I had less than 10 years to live and 20 million dollars I would do exactly
what I do right now.

I'd just be doing it in a nicer place (and probably be wearing more expensive
pants).

~~~
iqonik
I'd also be in a nicer place but hopefully minus the pants. That is the dream.

------
sliverstorm
I've always hated the "you have all the money in the world and ten years left"
type questions. Mostly because I have no idea what I would do.

~~~
moron4hire
You have no idea, or you have ideas and you second guess them, thinking them
trite or meaningless? I legitimately ask, because I had the same problem for a
long time. It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted to do, it was that I
couldn't focus on just one thing, and I couldn't figure out what the meaning
of it was, why any of it was important.

When I realized that it doesn't matter for things to be important, I was able
to get over my hangups and get to the things that I really, actually wanted to
do. When answering the question of "what would you do if you had limitless
resources", you have to discard cultural pressures, because cultural pressures
apply an artificial restriction to the "limitless resources" conceit of the
thought experiment.

If you find yourself not liking your answers then, you have to sit down and
figure out why. Keep climbing up the ladder of "why?". Why does it bother you?
And why is that reason important? Why do those conditions that make it
important exist?

~~~
sliverstorm
Most of the things that cross my mind are cliche and I know from experience I
would not actually find them all that satisfying.

It's possible that I would keep doing exactly what I am doing now, which I
don't know whether to consider a blessing or curse. Am I living my dreams, or
do I have no dreams?

~~~
moron4hire
I did an exercise one time in which I had to write down, in as much detail, my
"ideal" day. The exercise was structured around a conceit that there was a
magical genie who would grant you everything you wanted, but only if you could
describe it in detail, and only in the detail that you describe it.

I found it helpful. I learned a lot about what I want from it. It took me a
while to finish and ended up being several pages long. It helped when I
realized that the trick is to describe lifestyle, not possessions obtained or
goals achieved. That's really the important thing.

I realized that most of the goals I had created were vague, barely thought-
through assumptions that would supposedly make that lifestyle possible. But
those two things aren't really connected.

So now, I do some freelancing for 20 hours a week and the rest of the week is
mine. I've achieved 80% of my lifestyle goals and it was mostly about
rearranging the things I already had in my life.

I spend the rest of the week working on projects that will hopefully get me
the other 20%.

------
n72
Ironically, I need to stop doing my to-do list (ActiveInbox for me.) I've
actually found it's become somewhat addictive. I think it's the unconscious
feeling that I'm being productive and it actually keeps me from doing things I
might enjoy. I've started to time box my to-do listing. I wouldn't be
surprised if this is not an uncommon situation.

------
thejerz
"The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say
yes." \-- Tony Blair

~~~
robotresearcher
That guy could have said no a couple more times.

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Mikho
Nice piece. Get rid of excuses to continue to procrastinate and not get
results. Also, well aligned with the Pareto principle: just do that 20% that
get you results and improvement.

~~~
rhizome
Surely you aren't serious. If you "just do" the 20%, then that effort is
itself subject to Pareto.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
But surely a diminishing returns Pareto?

~~~
rhizome
Diminishing inputs, too.

------
frade33
Remove distractions = More Productivity. Simple as that.

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pbreit
To don't.

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Centreal
Pain-axis is enormously difficult/distressing to codify.

Stopping still has barely survived as logic and fact worth recording — as
actionable emotional-intelligence.

