The To-Ignore List

A pattern I have noticed with myself is that as I achieve some mild form of progress on my goals, my self-confidence expands faster than my execution capacity, resulting in overloading of goals. I start taking on goals and projects that lay further out of my core focus.

This has been happening slowly but steadily recently, leaving behind a wake of overwhelm. Within work, I started to heap on 1-1s and dive into too much details, even outside of the Vietnam marketplace. Outside of work, I began learning CS even while I am also learning Vietnamese, on top of the usual load of books that I am reading. This is on top of triathlon training and a growing social life, not to mention my key relationships. Life had been a whirlwind.

Peter Bregman's 18 Minutes is a timely stop point for me. Specifically, the to-ignore list. Counter-intuitively, to achieve more, we must strive to be less. And thus, I declare the following unimportant to me:

1. Social media
2. Responding to every message in 5 minutes (responding within the hour is good enough for work)
3. Presentations, sharings, catch-ups (50% effort is good enough)
4. Saving anything less than $100
5. News even within AI
6. All "work" outside of building the product, growing it, talking to customers, topgrading the team. This includes matters like the minutiae of tracking, cost savings below $1000.
7. For triathlon training, don't obsess over hitting 100% of the training plan. Getting started on each is good enough.
8. For language learning, don't worry about the lessons first. Just keep my Duolingo and Anki habits going.
9. Books: don't have to read everything