Do It First!

Jan 29
08:44

2008

Suzi Elton

Suzi Elton

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How many of us do a zillion trivial actions in a day and fail to complete our #1 priority activity? Here's an easy and effective solution to that problem.

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Do you find yourself putting off to the end of the day,Do It First! Articles the thing that is most important for you to accomplish on that day? Do you have a subtle feeling of dread through the day a dragging feeling, and resist taking action? Do you focus on piles of minutia cluttering your office area instead of doing that main thing? Do you handle multiple unimportant items on your To Do list, avoiding the priority item? Do you find that your #1 item slides to the end of the day with no action and it happens day after day, until the dread becomes overwhelming?

Consider experimenting with a new success technique that brings phenomenal results. What is it? Do it first! Whatever your #1 priority action is on any given day, simply do it first.

When I changed this habit and made myself do the most important thing first every day, doing so released an atomic bomb’s worth of energy. In the wake of that success, 10 more things got accomplished immediately and effortlessly. The emphasis is on effortlessly. It felt like these extra things just got themselves done, without any effort.

Consider experimenting with this. Sure enough, every day that you do the #1 thing first, you will find that that day is exceptionally productive. I’ve introduced this technique to many clients. Every single one of them who has seriously implemented it is getting the same results.  They report a feeling of elation, and pride and satisfaction with themselves.

How does this work? One of the main things that causes these results is clarity of focus on the #1 priority. Many of us go about our day as if everything on the gigantic To Do list is of equal importance. With this context, we can easily spend our day handling second or third tier activities as a method of avoiding the most important items. We let our attention get distracted by a massive number of time consuming trivial activities on our list.

The second way that this works is that the feeling of success early in the day sets a tone of success for the day. You, in effect, could quit at any point in the day knowing you’ve already been successful at your #1 priority. Rather than quitting though, this early success seems to work something like a slingshot, giving extra propulsion through the day. Try it. You’ll like it.

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