Start by reviewing your list of tasks, projects, or to-dos, and then ask these three questions about each item you have cited: 1. Who needs this done? 2. Why do they need it? 3. What difference will it make?

Managing an Overwhelming Workload 1. Challenge each item on your list: • Why is this on my list? • What goal, objective, or management process does this support? • Does it still matter? • What would be lost if I stopped doing it? 2. Review your list of tasks that are no longer relevant with your boss for agreement. 3. Make a new, shorter list of on

If an organization is going to efficiently change directions, adopt new strategies, or simply set new goals, a worthwhile exercise would be to ask three basic pruning questions: • Based on the new direction, strategy, or goal, what should we start doing? • Based on the new direction, strategy, or goal, what should we stop doing? • Based on the new

A particular paradox and challenge will appear over and over again: what works for you and what works for me may be different, even if the same basic concept is in play for both of us.

From there, he is said to have issued a dictum that if you were producing something for which you saw no apparent reason or value, you had permission to stop producing it and engage in a conversation about purpose, value, form, and substance.

Accountability is simply a way of owning the outcome, recognizing what’s in front of you, and then taking the next best step you can.

On the work front, many of us have tasks to perform that lack the kind of clarity found in exercising, especially in terms of a defined purpose, outcome, and deliverable. If you can assign yourself these attributes for your work, you may notice that you actually start to feel the same kind of response as when you exercise.

What do exercise and refrigerators have to do with workarounds? In the world of work, unfinished tasks, projects, and objectives all hold a certain amount of your mental energy, attention, or focus. When you get something done, whatever energy, attention, or focus you had invested in that incomplete item is released and becomes available to you. In

whenever you encounter a roadblock of any kind, look to yourself first. I suggest that in just about any situation, your ability to respond (response-ability) will be a function of your ability to control what you can, to influence what you can, and to simply respond to the rest.