Are you a goal setter? A planner? Someone with an ever-present to-do list?
Goals can be motivating. And, when paired with a system, they can lead to wonderful achievements.
Jim Collins, author of several business classics, including Good to Great, was all about that. Every year, he would set challenging goals for himself and then unleash his seemingly endless energy in pursuit of those goals.
Given all that he has achieved, it’s hard to argue against his approach to getting things done.
But that’s exactly what one of his grad school professors, Rochelle Myers, did. Collins and Myers stayed in touch after he finished school, and one year she challenged him, saying, “I notice, Jim, that you are a rather undisciplined person.”
Stunned, confused…and curious, Collins asked her to say more.
“Instead of leading a disciplined life, you lead a busy life,” she told him.
The 10-20 assignment
Myers gave Collins this thought experiment: “Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone call tells you that you have inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second tells you that you have an incurable and terminal disease, and you have no more than 10 years to live. What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?
Collins said that “10-20 assignment” marked a significant turning point in his life, and the "stop doing list” became an integral part of his annual planning process. It has helped him be even more intentional in allocating “the most precious of all resources: time.”
As he worked on Good to Great and grappled with the factors that made certain companies break from their pack of competitors to achieve remarkable, sustained success, he saw the wisdom of a stop-doing list ever more clearly.
“In cataloguing the key steps that ignited the transformations, my research team and I were struck by how many of the big decisions were not what to do, but what to stop doing.”
What about you?
What do you need to stop doing? It’s a great question to consider in all domains of life — your relationships, your health, your work, and all else.
If you narrow your focus to investing, how would you answer that question? Is this the year to stop monitoring the market or your investments so closely? To stop fretting over every jump or dip? We’ve written in the past about research showing that people who frequently look at what the market is doing tend to trade more often, usually to their detriment.
Is there certain content you should stop taking in? Certain voices you should stop listening to? As Joseph and I look for articles to include in each Friday’s roundup, we scan the headlines from many, many sources. And yet, there are relatively few that consistently offer ideas worth sharing. Some that I paid attention to for far too long, I eventually stopped taking in. Which voices need to be switched off for the good of your investing sanity?
The clock is ticking
Professor Myers’ seemingly simple idea, to carefully consider what you should stop doing, has implications that go well beyond boosting productivity.
“Rochelle spoke to me repeatedly about the idea of ‘making your life a creative work of art,’ Collins said. “A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally important, what is not. It is the discipline to discard what does not fit — to cut out what might have already cost days or even years of effort — that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a painting, a company or, most important of all, a life.”
Of course, Collins is right that time is one of our most valuable assets. Our lives here are brief, each day a precious gift. What will you do with the gift you’ve been given? And what should you stop doing to make the most of that gift?
For more on this topic, read, Best New Year’s Resolution? A Stop Doing List
