How To Cut Your Losses and Start Over
Posted on June 22, 2009 by LJ
Welcome to Simple Productivity Blog! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. This will allow you to receive updates in your RSS reader every time new content is posted here. If you want to receive updates in your email, click on the envelope in the upper right corner, or use the "Subscribe" link below the blog title.
Please take some time to check out the content on the site. You may comment on any article by scrolling down and using the form at the bottom of all articles. Thanks for visiting!
Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.
Have you ever gotten so far behind in something that it would be easier to start over than to catch up?
I recently realized I had a few hundred podcasts to listen to, and the list was growing bigger each week. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy them, I just hadn’t had time to listen for the past few weeks.
I knew I would never get through the backlog, and I would fall further and further behind. It was time for drastic action.
Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and start over.
- Throw out the backlog. I purged all podcasts off my iPod and my computer. I felt a tinge of regret, but I realized I could always go back and listen to back episodes when (if) I got caught up. This step is important, because otherwise you will find yourself unwilling to let go of enough.
- Reevaluate your consumption. I looked at the number of podcasts I was listening to as well as the frequency of updates and the duration of the ‘casts and set my limit to the ones I knew I would make time for. You could also limit yourself to a number of ‘casts per week. It is important to balance what you can make time for. I left a daily ‘cast on, but the shows only last for two minutes, so I felt that was do-able. I took off a bi-weekly ‘cast that usually lasts an hour and a half because I was always falling behind.
- Unsubscribe temporarily. Look at what you haven’t listened to in the past month and temporarily unsubscribe. I almost didn’t do this, but I realized iTunes would keep serving up the ‘casts unless I unsubscribed. This step is important because it will set overall limits to what is coming in.
- Adjust how much you save. iTunes has a built in feature that allows you to specify how many ‘casts to keep. For my two-hour “radio” show I only keep the most recent. If I miss one, no big deal. For some of the other casts I limit myself to two or three back episodes. Some I keep all episodes because they are parts of a course that I like to refer to. This step is important because it will fine-tune the volume of ‘casts.
This philosophy and steps can be applied to other backlogs as well. It could be done with newspapers, periodicals and email.
[A friend of mine is trying to apply this to housework as well, but he's only gotten to the first step: he says it would be easier to move than to clean. Somehow I don't think that is a good way to catch up!]
Photo by batega
Comments (1)
I did a similar thing with magazines a while back. I had months of unread issues. I had no hope of catching up but would feel guilty reading the new issues with the old ones sitting there unread. So I was always reading ‘old news’ and getting less motivated to catch up.
I threw out the backlog, cancelled some subscriptions and am much better off for it.