Tuesday, December 30, 2008

One Thing More, . . .

So what's that mean?

It means that you should look for one more thing you can do while going about your regular schedule.
For instance, if you're walking down the hall in your house and happen to see a pair of discarded socks left by your eleven year old, lying there on the floor, don't just walk on by. Pick them up on your way and drop them off in the laundry, or call out to your eleven year old if he's around and tell him to do it.
Or if your working on a project for a client and you're about to wrap it up, take another look to see if there's one more small thing you can do to improve it, or simply send an email out to say it's complete and they'll have it soon, or actually send it off then.
Or if your walking across your yard and you see that the kids have left the yard a wreck, pick up the football on your way and put it up wherever it goes and maybe even have the kids pick up the rest. The point is to do one thing more.
The thing not to do is to get sidelined. What's that?
Well suppose you go over to pick up the football and you happen to see that the hose is out too so you go over to coil that up and notice that the patio could use sweeping. Well if your plan was to sweep the patio anyway, or if you really have the time then go for it. But if you were just on your way across the yard in the first place to grab your laptop so you can finish the project your working on (or whatever), just pick up the football.

Why?

Because picking up the football will get one more small thing done. It will leave a little less to do later. If you make a habit of looking for one thing more you will, in small increments, get a lot of things done that you really hadn't given that much thought to.
Don't go out of your way to look for things to add to your "to do" list, just look for things that are on your way, right in front of you, easy to accomplish.
If you run across something that's right in your path but it would take enough effort to throw you off your regular schedule even a few minutes, put it on your "to do" list.

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