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This week’s show is about getting less done with less stress. Yes, I said less done with less stress. We are talking about things that don’t usually come up when we talk about productivity and they don’t involve fancy planners, note pads and cool pens. Although, I love all three. And, there are a lot of great tools to manage our doing and productivity and one of my personal favorites is David Allen’s approach and there are others too like the pomodoro technique.  But, what about the idea of just deciding to do less? This is a little talked about option in the world of productivity and I think it is also one of the greatest contributors to the unhealthy levels of stress that we can encounter in our lives.

I’m not necessarily the only one who thinks so either. Dr. Barry Schwartz points to a similar idea in his book, The Paradox of Choice, which I highly recommend. He isn’t necessarily talking about productivity in his book but I do think he is pointing to what happens to us with all of the choices we are given and how sometimes having more options isn’t necessarily better. I suspect this is what happens in our lives as well when it comes to deciding the things that we should be doing in any given moment and the things that we should have living on our to-do lists.

In this week’s show we discuss some less fancier ideas to getting things done with less stress. One approach, is to do fewer things. Believe me, you will love the many options. Here are just a few that we discuss:

•  don’t answer your phone if it is an unrecognized number
• Let things that aren’t time sensitive wait, they aren’t time sensitive. You can’t possibly get everything done at one.
• Leave your email alone pretty much most of the day. Check it once and move on.
• Avoid too many things with hard deadlines whenever possible and recurring appointments
• Prioritize who and what you need to prioritize; who are the people that you really need to take care of and spend time with and who are the one’s you don’t. The 80/20 rule of business is a good one to consider here.
• Stop sending people calendar invites that you suddenly become the one in charge of managing if something changes. Most people can handle their own calendar just fine and if not, you probably don’t want to be meeting with them anyway.
• Stop and start meetings on time and don’t let conversations ramble. If you hear yourself repeating yourself, it is time to end the meeting.
• Once a week, completely and totally unplug!! You’ll feel like a million bucks..mostly because you’ll find something else to do that you actually enjoy doing.

Now, what are some of your tricks for getting less done with less stress. We would love to hear from you!