Do you find that you never have enough time to get everything done. Always rushing around trying to finish things ? Perhaps you feel constantly fatigued because of the unfinished tasks behine you and the mountain of tasks waiting in the future ?

Feeling overburdened is a hard situation to ever get completely out of, but if we are to succeed at all we have to simplify our lives. This bluntly means giving things up. If you have a list of long term goals then you might have prioritised them. If you want to achieve your primary goals in as little time as possile then you might be best putting lower priority goals in stasis. In other words, taking no action, until you hava a vacant slot.

Out of my yearly goals, I try and make a list of ten that I want to achieve in that year. However, I only pick the top three that mean the most to me. As my year only has three active project slots, until one of the goals is reached the others are inactive. Once a goal is completed, the next most important issue takes its place in the available slot.

As well as saying no to yourself, to be truly effective you must also learn to say no to other people. If you don’t any free time you have from simplifying your own life will be largly eaten up. In fact, regardless of how or where you gained time from through saying no, new time consuming tasks will appear.

Your focus should be on eliminating unproductive tasks and introducing new ‘higher return’ activities almost straight away into the newly freed time. Otherwise, external people and circumstance will dictate your timetable to you. Only by saying yes to the most valued of tasks will you be able to make the most of your time.