The To-Ignore List
A pattern I have noticed with myself is that as I achieve some mild form of progress on my goals, my self-confidence expands faster than my execution capacity, resulting in overloading of goals. I start taking on goals and projects that lay further out of my core focus.
This has been happening slowly but steadily recently, leaving behind a wake of overwhelm. Within work, I started to heap on 1-1s and dive into too much details, even outside of the Vietnam marketplace. Outside of work, I began learning CS even while I am also learning Vietnamese, on top of the usual load of books that I am reading. This is on top of triathlon training and a growing social life, not to mention my key relationships. Life had been a whirlwind.
Peter Bregman's 18 Minutes is a timely stop point for me. Specifically, the to-ignore list. Counter-intuitively, to achieve more, we must strive to be less. And thus, I declare the following unimportant to me:
- Social media
- Responding to every message in 5 minutes (responding within the hour is good enough for work)
- Presentations, sharings, catch-ups (50% effort is good enough)
- Saving anything less than $100
- News even within AI
- All "work" outside of building the product, growing it, talking to customers, topgrading the team. This includes matters like the minutiae of tracking, cost savings below $1000.
- For triathlon training, don't obsess over hitting 100% of the training plan. Getting started on each is good enough.
- For language learning, don't worry about the lessons first. Just keep my Duolingo and Anki habits going.
- Books: don't have to read everything