Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,98

think of these as busywork. You might ask yourself if you can delegate or hire someone else to do them. You can also ask if anyone but you will notice whether the task is left undone. The idea here is that your time is best spent on tasks that will move your life and goals forward.

Then include current and ongoing tasks that don’t benefit from additional attention. This might include systems that are already set up, such as making the kids’ lunches or having a brief meeting with your team at the start of the work day. These are part of your routine and shouldn’t be clogging your to-do list on a daily basis.

Last, include urgent tasks that are often to-do lists given to us by other people, such as getting some background research on a project or making follow-up calls. These are tasks that might be necessary to do but perhaps don’t need to be done by you.8

When you’re finished with your don’t-do list, it should read like an anti-menu, a list of items that aren’t available for your time. You will then be able to easily identify what will actually move you forward and do those activities instead.

KWIK START

Do this right now. Take a moment to create your not-to-do list for today. What are the things you need to avoid today to focus and achieve your goals? Be specific and check off that list by not doing it.

Problem-Solving: Study Your Errors

When we take the time to study the mistakes we make, especially those that have a lasting effect on our lives, we turn every mistake into a learning opportunity. Use this model to evaluate what went wrong so you can get a better result next time.

First, get clear on what did or didn’t happen. Often, we confuse cause with correlation, so be sure you understand what happened and what led to the mistake or error.

Next, ask yourself why those mistakes happened. Look for the deeper layers behind the incident. You might ask “why” until you’ve run out of layers to question.

Then ask how you can best avoid the same mistakes in the future. If some of the factors that caused the error are out of your control, ask how you can prevent causes that can’t be eliminated.

Finally, using what you’ve gleaned from this exercise, determine how you can create the best conditions to support your desired outcomes in the future.9

To help illustrate this strategy, let’s imagine this scenario: the fundraising project you orchestrated for your child’s school greatly underperformed your expectations. First, you need to be clear on what happened. Did you and your team fail to inspire people to give, or did the donors fail to show up? In this case, let’s assume that the donors were available, but they didn’t give as much as you anticipated or sometimes didn’t give at all.

Now, you need to ask yourself why. Did it have something to do with the way you presented the need? Did it have something to do with the time of year? Did it have something to do with the economy? Remember that your answer here might lead to additional questions. In the scenario we’re playing out, let’s determine that you decide that you might not have emphasized the importance of this campaign, because there’d been a fundraiser at the school only two months prior and you didn’t want to appear pushy, and that your being overly polite caused potential donors to think the cause wasn’t critical.

So, how do you avoid this in the future? You decide that the next time you run the campaign, you’re going to do it earlier in the school year and, regardless of the proximity of any other fundraiser, you’re going to go out of your way to stress the value and importance of this one and why donors need to open up their checkbooks. The upshot of this is that you realize that you need to improve the way you send out the message about your campaign, and you determine to take a class on this so you will be much better prepared when next year’s campaign comes along.

Strategy: Second-Order Thinking

Most of us think about the consequences of our actions, but few of us think even two steps beyond the immediate effects our actions will have on our lives. Let’s consider Ryan Holiday’s book, Conspiracy, which describes how entrepreneur Peter Thiel planned and executed a takedown of one of America’s most prolific (and disliked) online magazines, Gawker.10 Thiel’s desire to