An article on theaddicted2success.com website tells us how we can use a don’t-do list to cut certain things out of our lives. To build your don’t-do list, you need to answer the following three questions:
1) Which activities are, in reality, merely procrastination?
If you chase new ideas in the midst of your current projects, you should park them and get back to them later. You need the time for doing the hard work to complete your current tasks.
So put the daydreaming and contemplating about what you should do next on the list.
If you really need to finish something, write the new ideas on your don’t-do list – you'll come back to these ideas when your current work is done.
2) What drains your energy?
What activities lower your productivity? Is it your email? So, put “no email before noon” on your list. Are morning meetings guilty? Or phone calls?
Anything that regularly derails your work should be cut out from your daily routine. Perhaps you can choose to do calls only on Thursday, for example.
Build the list and you'll free your hands for the most important tasks you need to get done.
3) What simply isn’t productive?
It's not good to get distracted by your smartphone every 10 minutes. Answering messages and posts on social media also distract you from your work. So those are probably candidates for your don't-do list as well.
-jk-