The Stop Doing List
A number of years ago I was at a conference where the speaker asked us if we had a to-do list. Everyone in the room raised their hand. Then came the surprise: he asked how many of us had a stop-doing list. Just about everyone’s hands went down.
The point was that it doesn’t matter how long and important your to-do list is, if you can’t say no to activities that are preventing you from doing the MOST important things.
That made a huge impact on me, and I went out of the session to find a corner where I could jot down some “stop doing” ideas.
If you had to make a list of just three things, that if you stopped doing them, you would have more time for what is important, what would be on your list?
Here’s a suggestion for where to start with stopping. Look for things that clutter up your (mental, emotional, physical) space. On your Stop Doing List, write down the activity you do that brings or allows that clutter in.
For example: Jane Doe’s Stop Doing List Item #1 — Buying things because they are on sale.
In my work with creativity, I have found that one of the most essential ingredients is space. I mean physical space to do the work, but even more importantly, mental and emotional space. Without space, we cannot create.
When we bring extraneous physical, mental, and emotional items into our world, we clutter up our space.
Space helps us incubate ideas, it helps us find the safety necessary to make intuitive (risky) leaps, and it helps bring focus, away from noise and needs of other people.
Read that last bit again. Away from the noise and needs of other people. That’s a hint for your Stop Doing List. What kinds of activities are on your list that create noise, that allow noise in? I’m talking about the sound-kind and the information-kind of noise. For example, you cannot plot the course of your life if you are instead spending your time consuming information from your phone or iPad.
And what about other people’s needs? Do they always come first? Can you be courageous enough to take one of those, even a small one, OFF of your list of to dos?
Here’s the thing: we cannot create without saying no. You have to stop doing some things in order to do the things that only you can do. As Stephen Covey put it, saying NO is necessary when there is a deeper YES.
To move forward in life, often you must identify, rigorously, the things you only do because it is the course of least resistance, or because it pleases someone else (often a spouse or child), or because it is an escapist distraction.
You probably know what it is that you must stop doing if you are to find the time for what is really calling you.
Here are some things that have made it onto my stop-doing list:
- Netflix
- Answering every email
- Grocery shopping (I pay $10 extra to order online)
- Working without a timer
- Saying yes to every invitation to a friend’s gathering
- Commuting more than 10 minutes to work
Now you are probably thinking, “Yeah, no way I’m getting rid of Netflix.” But try not to be absolutist about the list. I still watch Netflix, but I did reduce my consumption of it by a considerable amount. A more accurate bullet point would probably read “Netflix on certain nights of the week.” That single item has allowed me the freedom to do things like write this blog.
Granted, some of these were harder to implement than others. That last one took about a decade. I’m not saying your Stop Doing List will be easy, but you need to make it nevertheless. You’ll find some areas that are immediately fixable and others that will require a long-term strategy. The point will be that you’ll identify areas that are stealing time and energy and emotional commitment from you, and by the simple fact of becoming aware of them, you can choose to shrink their power.
Your Stop Doing List is about empowerment. Of yourself, yes. But also of all the people who you have yet to reach with your creativity.
Make a promise to yourself to write a Stop Doing List before you go to bed tonight.
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More on creativity at RightBrainSolutions.org.