I see myself as an essentialist. It’s based on the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown which I’m rereading again.
In our present world there is a lot going on and we always have a lot to do and to read and to watch. We have the FOMO syndrome, which is the fear of missing out. You should get used to that because our world is so big, you cannot know everything.
Multitasking and having a lot of tasks on the todo list is the everyday life of a lot of people. But what they don’t know is that multitasking is not helping them to be faster, it’s actually making them slower.
Our brain is not made for thinking about more than one thing.
Analyze First What Is Necessary
Do you know the 80/20 principle or also called Pareto principle? It means that approximately 20% of your tasks/effort make around 80% of your result or success. It’s never exactly 20% make 80%, sometimes it can even be 90/10 %.
Analyze your tasks or your result or goal you want to achieve. What are the necessary 20% to achieve 80% of your goal? Figure out the necessary tasks and then do them first. If you have time later you can the rest of the tasks, if really necessary.
If you analyze your business: 20% of your customers make you 80% of your profits, so focus on those and maybe even cut off the others.
The Flow State
We get the most done by going into the flow state and doing only one thing at a time. Not thinking about anything else. You are focused on only one thing, and there are no distractions, and you would feel like time is passing by really quickly.
First you choose one task you want to do and that’s the only thing you will do. Then you turn off and remove all possible distractions. Every distraction is wasting time, because you need a few minutes to come back to the flow state.
Before you go into the flow state, you should also get your head clear. If you think of something else, you will not be productive. I’m writing this right now and my head is not clear, because I have other tasks to do today which worry me. So I’m not in the flow state and I will not so fast to write this story right now.
The best thing to do then? Take a break. Relax or take a walk. Get your head clear again and then start again. Which is what I will do now.
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