I’ve been listening to Mel Robbins, speaker and author of The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage. No, it has nothing to do with picking food off the floor. 🙂 In one of her videos, she talks about creating a “priority” list, rather than a To Do list.
The priority list may only have one thing on it—say, for example, “Finish chapter 3” or “Brainstorm picture book idea.” That’s actually good. It means your brain can focus all of its energy on helping you make it happen.
After you write down your priority—and writing down is important because it begins to lodge the idea into your consciousness—then list a few steps to help you accomplish it. These steps can be very basic and that’s good too—if they are basic and easy, you are more likely to do them. 🙂
Example
Let’s use one of the above examples.
Priority: Finish Chapter 3 of novel
Action steps:
- Block out time on today’s calendar.
- Open the document to the chapter–do not look at email, do not look at FB, do not pass Go and collect $200!
- Re-read opening to remind myself what I’m doing.
- Get to where I left off and WRITE!
Robbins recommends doing this first thing in the morning so it’s lodged in your brain. Now I confess to doing this on Monday and not getting to my novel. Why? Because I was answering emails about book events for IF YOUR MONSTER and working on my website—the new and improved look will be unveiled very soon-woop! Then I forgot to do it the rest of the week. But I’m not beating myself up. I worked on the novel a bit last night and I will try this priority thing tomorrow.
Robbins also says the priority should be sometime you want to do—the other tasks that must get done, you’ll get done. (Hmm. Maybe I need to look at that in terms of what I focused on Monday.) So choose something that’s all about you and no one else and see if that makes a difference.
Here’s to our priorities!
