Listen, if you’re trying to get a startup off the ground, learn a new skill, change a habit, or otherwise make rapid, large scale changes in your work or personal life, you need to let things go.

 

You can’t accumulate demands on your time and attention and expect anything to go better than it went before. Like when you make a task list that’s too long? You never get it done. So what happens the next day? It’s longer. But Future You is magic, right? Future You can do more shit in less time. Not like lazy Yesterday You. What a loser.

 

Highly effective people get more important, higher impact things done not because of all that they do, but because of all they don’t do. They don’t waste time.

 

It’s Time for a Funeral

Get out a piece of paper, or whatever you use to track your growing list of demands on your limited time and attention. List the things you’ve started and haven’t finished, that nag you and occupy headspace, things you wish you finished, you should have finished, you hope to finish one day. Put it all down there.

 

Probably, that list is unreasonable. So, what’s really important? What are the few things that are most essential? Not nice-to-haves, essential. Keep those. Kill everything else.

 

Not ready for such a housecleaning of headspace? That’s OK. Pick one thing and intentionally stop it. Just one. Kill another thing tomorrow. You have my permission, killer.

 

Bring out your dead.