George Kao explains the slim list: keep your full to-do list separate, but carry a daily list of just one to three priorities. If a task keeps rolling over, break it smaller, delete it, or hand it off. Offloading memory to paper frees your mind for better thinking.
One of the reasons why a to do list doesn't work for a lot of people is because it's visually overwhelming. Maybe you don't realize this, but when you have a bunch of tasks listed all in one piece of paper, or one document or one listing, your brain kind of goes on overload a little bit. And so it at the very least slows you down from making better decisions. You can eventually, but you kind of have to fight your way through all the visual complexity. So what I recommend is creating a slim list. A slim list, A list that only has three items on that listing that are the most important items for today. And then the rest of that document is completely blank so that you can have visual simplicity, which helps your brain to then focus on on that one, those two or three, your slim. This could be literally just one item if you really just want to focus on it today. So I want you to give that a try and let me actually talk you through a little bit about creating a slim list. So what you're going to need is you're going to actually need two separate documents, or if you want to do this on paper, two separate pieces of paper. Okay. When I say document, I mean you can just go to Google Docs and go create a new document. And it's all free. Google Docs, I love that tool. I use it all the time. So create two separate documents. One of them title your to do list and the other one title your slim list. Okay. On your to do list, I encourage you to write down everything that you feel like you need to get done. Anything that's kind of bugging at your attention, anything that's an open loop that needs to be completed, anything that ideas that you would love to do when you have time, write it all down so that you don't have to keep it in this head of yours. Your human brain is excellent for such things as pattern recognition, improvisation, relationships. But it's terrible for things like remembering things. Okay. When you use your brain to try to remember things, you are using energy that could otherwise be used for higher level thinking like improvisation, creativity, relating pattern recognition things that your human brain does far better than a computer does, or even a piece of paper. The technology of a piece of paper or a document is to remember items. So let the document, let the piece of paper do that. Don't use your brain to do that. Okay? So on one document called the to do list, you write down everything that you might want to do that you, you know, that's what, that's what people usually use as a to do list. It's just a bunch of random stuff. Okay, Then the other document is your slim list, which is currently blank. And I want you to ask yourself, when you look at your to do list, ask this question. If I only got three of these things done today, could only do three of these, all these items on my to do list, which of those three must it be? Transfer those three items to your slim list, write them down again on the slim list, and your slim list has nothing on the entire document except for those three items. Alright? So then throughout the day, keep your slim list with you, okay? And keep referring back to it so that you can get, you can at least give your attention and energy to those items so that you can, if you're not doing it, at the very least, your subconscious mind is working on the solutions to those three items. Okay? And you will find yourself with a slim list being so much more focused, productive, maybe even creative than you are with the complexity and the visual overwhelm of a to do list. Give it a try. Let me know how it feels. Now, one of the issues that sometimes comes up is what if you find yourself writing the same items again and again on your slim list day after day after day. Yesterday you wrote three items down, maybe you crossed off one of them on your slim list. But today those two of those three items are still there. And then you still want to focus on them, you don't get them done the next day, etc. So if it comes to like the third day and you still have that same item, one, two or three of the same items on your slim list, here's what you need to do. A couple, couple ideas for you. One, you need to break down that overwhelming, that difficult item into more doable steps. So that, okay, let's say one item might be something like climb Mount Everest right on that list. Obviously you can't get that done today. Remember I said if you could get three things done today, what would those three things be? Climb Mount Everest or whatever. The analogy is to your life and to your business is way too big to do in one day or even one month. But a doable step could be research mountain climbing classes. Okay, that's very doable. Research mountain climbing classes. And so that would be the item on your slim list. Not climb Mount Everest. Climb Mount Everest would go on your to do list. And you see a to do list item, you say, okay, that I want to put on my slim list, but I know that's going to be too overwhelming even if it was just that one item. So let me break that down into something that's really doable. What is the next super doable step that I can then put on my slim list? Put on your slim list. You'll get it done. You'll check it off or cross it off. You'll feel good. You'll build your confidence over time by using your slim list and become more and more empowered to do things that are less originally less doable for you. But now you feel the confidence to be able to do that even more. The second strategy for taking care of something to keep showing up on your slim list is, you know what? Eliminate it. All of us tend to have too many wishes as if we had 100 lifetimes in this one lifetime to do it. So you may just need to eliminate something. If you're tired of looking at it, I encourage you to eliminate it. I'll tell you this. Everything is optional. Everything is optional except in my opinion, your connection to your Divine Source. It's the only thing that's not optional. But everything else is optional. Every single to do it. And every dream you have, every goal you have, every requirement. Everything is optional except your connection to your Divine Source. That that is the most important thing. Right? All right. And then the third strategy for taking care of something that keeps showing up is to delegate it. Why do you have to do it? So if you can't bear to. If you don't know how to break it down, maybe that's already most broken down into a doable step. If you can't bear to eliminate it, then you delegate it. Give it to somebody else to do. You don't have to be the one that does everything or hire hire that out for someone else to do so. I hope that this is beneficial. You may need to watch this video again to get all the ideas. But I encourage you to start using a slim list as soon as possible and let me know how it goes for you. Be well.
