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To-Do or Not-To-Do? – Two Important Lists

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Last night, I sent a mental thank-you note to Air Canada for the free eye-mask I’d received during a flight to London last year. It was one of those nights where I’d been running so crazy all day that I literally needed to block out all input to my eyes and just shut down.

I’m a huge fan of new technology and get absorbed for hours in clicking through links along the path of new and interesting information. I’m absolutely guilty of checking my Blackberry at 2AM, after waking up to help the baby settle down again. My info-seeking muscle is loving these days! I’m getting text messages, voicemails, emails, tweets, Facebook updates/messages/invites, LinkedIn invites/messages/groups, etc at all hours of the day! I have the added bonus that my kids will provide second-tier alerts if I miss the buzz or ding of my Blackberry. “MOMMY! Your phone is ringing!” or “MOMMY! Your phone went ‘Bzzzzzzzz….’” IT. IS. AWESOME.

On the downside, I’m going to need a clone or figure out how to do without sleep if I don’t learn to disconnect. I’ve been thinking about how to refocus and was suggested an article called “Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning” by Peter Bregman. He offers a great suggestion on how to “pause, prioritize and focus” by creating a Focus List and an Ignore List for each day. He talks about a study on car accidents revealed that drivers in 80% of car accidents were distracted in the 3 seconds before crashing. It’s ironic that in our constant quest for that little bit of info that might get us ahead, we miss moments of great importance happening right in front of us. CRASH.

The idea of creating a Focus List seems pretty straight-forward. It’s what I need to pay attention to today. These are the things that I don’t want to miss because they make me happy and make me feel successful at the end of the day. My family is tops on this list, followed by friends, my work and personal goals. I know what I need to get done today.

I find the Ignore List much trickier to create. What am I willing to ignore today? For me, I suppose I’d designate these to be things that aren’t time-sensitive. Clearly, reviewing my friends’ Facebook statuses can wait until the end of the day, if I have time after everything else or between other things. I’ve created separate personal email accounts that help me filter necessary vs low-priority messages so I don’t feel so over-burdened by a huge Inbox needing review. This list still requires some work for me.

What is on your Focus List today? What is on your Ignore List today? How can you adapt tools on yesterday’s Ignore List so it provides useful, focused info for tomorrow? Have you found any useful tools to streamline your Focus List so you can add more items? Would love to get your thoughts and feedback in comments.

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