I’m on a kick of identifying the one thing. Key to making a great day’s plan is circling the one thing that’s the most important thing to do that day, then making sure you do it. But what about this week?
What is the one most important thing to do
this week?
Can you pick it out? If so, when you make your week’s plan set everything else on a back burner, and make sure that one thing happens.
If it’s not obvious, maybe the following three approaches will help you decide.
Drive to the finish line.
Can you push almost everything else aside to drive toward one particular goal this week? Make it something in the category of not urgent, but really important, like getting a will finalized, finishing a chapter of a book, wrapping up a home improvement project, or even doing nothing! Most things can wait a week, so why not find out what it means to dedicate yourself to one goal and let everything else take second seat?
Stop Sucking.
This concept comes from a great talk Merlin Mann† gave to Google about managing email. When someone in the audience asked a question about a “friend” who had over 10,000 unread emails in her inbox, Merlin’s reply was,
“If you can’t be great at something, at least stop sucking at it.”
His solution: Drag the 10,000 unread emails into a folder and start from scratch. Chip away at the pile later, but keep your inbox clean going forward.
This applies to moving, too. Instead of having boxes piled in every room. Get them all into one room ASAP. That way all the other rooms can be beautiful and functional right away.
For me it means getting systems, routines, and automation in place so I can focus on the most important stuff without distraction. This week the one most important thing I can do is get Quicken up to date and my monthly money review back into its routine.
Quit all together.
This might be the best thing you ever did. Is there something you can quit this week? You may need to spend a little effort wrapping up, but you’ll be surprised how simple it can be to just say, “I’m done.”
† Merlin Mann is super funny and super smart. His 43 Folders podcasts on productivity made me laugh hard while listening to his helpful ideas for getting stuff done.
I couldn’t do it! Damn. I really wanted to finish my Quicken entry and I got it done for my biz, but not the personal stuff yet and I can tell I’m not going to get it done before a trip this weekend. Should I bring my computer on the trip and just get it done? Maybe.
Just out of curiosity, do you download your transactions into Quicken from the Internet? I have *all* my accounts (e.g. bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts) set up with Internet access. I just download the transactions, assign them an account (or sometimes split into multiple accounts), and then I’m done.
Hi Mark, That’s exactly what I do. I just opened a bunch of new accounts (moved my money from the big banks) and need to set all that up again. Also, I like to categorize everything for tax and budgeting reasons. It takes about 30 minutes a month once everything is in place. It makes my life much more manageable and also, magically, grows my money without my thinking about it.