When pressed for time, we’re often advised to ‘Prioritize!’ as if that will solve the problem. But prioritizing accomplishes relatively little, because it assumes that everything and everyone merits our time and attention – we’ll just get to the less-important items later. But later never really arrives, so the list never ends. The key is to recognize that while prioritization is necessary, the critical next step is triage. You have to actively ignore the items whose importance falls below a certain threshold. Decide where your cut-off point is and stick to it. You don’t have to get through your entire inbox or to-do list, you just have to get through the truly important messages and cross off the most important items. Actively ignoring things and saying no to people is difficult, but it’s the only way to reclaim your time.
Adapted from “The Most Productive People Know Who to Ignore” Ed Batista. Source: Harvard Business Publishing