Lisa Woodruff explains her 24-hour rule: if an idea excites you, act on it within a day to test its real value. She empties a physical basket of notes and tasks each Sunday, deciding what can wait and what needs immediate action. This clears mental clutter and kills the endless list of things you think you should do.
Chapters
Today I want to introduce you to an idea that I like to call the 24-hour rule. The 24-hour rule is going to free you up from all the things you should do and you could do and you might do and you want to do and someday this and someday that. We are going to get rid of all of the coulds and shoulds and woulds and some days. And we are just going to focus on today. So let me tell you the 24-hour rule in a nutshell. The 24-hour rule is something that I developed for myself after I had been doing the Sunday basket for a few years. And what I found was a couple of the items that were in my Sunday basket would move and would stay there time and time and time again. And so the rule of the Sunday basket is that on Sunday you empty the Sunday basket completely. You take absolutely every piece of paper, note to yourself, item that you've thrown in there, piece of mail, slash pocket, out of the Sunday basket. And then you hold up every single item and you ask yourself one question: can this wait until next Sunday? And if it can, it goes right back in the Sunday basket. At the end of your Sunday basket time, you have items left not in your Sunday basket that need to be acted on, that you need to do something with before next Sunday. Pay the bill, write the check, return the item, mail something, fix your kid's TV, whatever it is. Well, when I had been doing this for quite a while, what I noticed was I am an idea person. I've told you before, I— Dave Ramsey says I am the wow person. Wow, we could do this! Wow, we could do that! I am not the how person, like how is that going to work in the budget, you know, none of that detail stuff. You made time within 24 hours to flesh out that idea and decide if it was worth it or not. And what I have found, as soon as I adopted this 24-hour rule Is that if I really want to do something, if I really think it's going to be cool and move my business or awesome for my family or something I want to do for my house, I can almost always start to take action within 24 hours if I'm that moved by the idea. Even with that time that you spend doing the Sunday basket, you gain time in your week because everything is done in 1 hour on Sunday. Not in little bits of time throughout the week. What is something that is sitting in your Sunday basket, sitting on your to-do list, sitting in your email inbox, and you're like, oh, I should do this, I could do this, I want to do this someday? And I challenge you to delete it. Delete the email, throw away the printout, Just get rid of it and lighten your load. There is only so much you can do. There's just one of you, and there is only so much you can do in your day. And I really, really, really want you to be able to use some of your free time for whatever you want to use it for.
