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OF is extremely capable of collecting work for you. Boy. And once you become more productive it will collect ten times the stuff it does now.

Just to make you see the landfill you have created: Fill in the duration field. Then look again, add up the numbers, and see how much time this stuff will cost. It will make you realise that you simply do not have enough time to do that pile in an entire lifetime. It will hurt. Life's a bitch. You will have to choose.

Start deleting, delegating and deferring stuff as much as you dare (not 'can', no, 'dare'!). If you haven't spent time on it in the past month, you might as well postpone it for another two. If the outcome is of no use to YOU personally drop it and see whether anyone cares.

Then, every week, flag as many tasks as you can do in 50% of available time that week. Cut yourself some slack and flag a few fun/personal/important items. The rest of your time will be gobbled up by spilled drinks, friends visiting, roofs collapsing, that sort of thing. And work only on the flagged tasks. Yes, you won't get much done. But: You WILL get stuff done. Which feels good.

Another helpful one: lower your standards. Instead of spending 4 hours finding the best paint for your boat, and then another 2 to find the cheapest place to order it, drive down to the local hardware store and simply buy the stuff in the colour they have. Three layers of paint? Well, two will do just fine (seeing as it hasn't rusted very much in the time it took you to actually get round to painting the thing).

I've spent the past five years trying to make the treadmill spin faster, while I now figured out that it's much more productive to make it spin at a steady pace, instead of spinning faster and faster and then stopping again. I'm now ready to start moving up a notch, by being much more selective in what I do and what I don't do.

Nick