Do you ever get notifications about an upcoming appointment or scheduled task and miss it? You don’t see the pop-up or hear the chime and, oh well, there has a be a better way. 

Besides having an assistant knock on your door to tell you your next appointment has arrived. 

I just heard about a guy who uses a stupidly simple way to make sure he doesn’t miss things. Or ignore them. In addition to setting notifications for events on his calendar et al., he sets the alarm clock on his phone. When it rings or buzzes or chirps or plays a song, he can’t ignore it because it doesn’t stop until he stops it. 

And, unlike the polite notifications most of our apps give us, the alarms on our phones are loud. And obnoxious. Which is why we use them to wake up (especially when we have an early plane to catch and it’s still dark out). 

He sets an alarm to notify him to wake up, of course, but also for meetings, to eat, exercise, shut down for the day (and plan the next day), and for important tasks and time blocks that often get away from him.

I thought this was a great idea and set up my first alarm for 9am tomorrow to try it out. You might want to give it a go yourself. 

Especially to notify you it’s time to do something you don’t want to do. 

I’m sure you’ve figured out that you will never get everything done. But you do your best. You go through your lists of tasks and projects and goals, prioritize them, work as hard as you can, but you still don’t (seem to) make a dent.

Stop trying so hard.

Choose a few things that are important to you and let go of the rest. You’ll feel much better. And get much more (important things) done. 

One area to do this is with your reading list. You don’t have time to read all those books and articles and watch all those videos. And you shouldn’t try.

Skim through the pile if you feel you must or delegate that to staff. Or buy “book summaries” instead of the whole enchilada.

Commit to consuming only the highest quality material and ruthlessly eliminate everything else.

Yes, it will take time to sort through everything, but the tradeoff is that you’ll be able to delete perhaps 95% of your reading pile. Most things are unimportant, cumulative, or irrelevant. Get rid of it in favor of the precious few.

(I’m reminding myself of this as I type. . .)

What then? Stop skimming and start studying. 

Read (the good stuff) slowly. If it fizzles out, jettison it and move on to something else.

Highlight key points and think about the ideas presented—what they mean, questions they answer, other questions they pose—and put the important points in your notes, in your own words. They’ll have more meaning for you that way because you’ll need to reflect on them before you record them. 

What do you agree with? What do you like? What bothers you? How will this information benefit you?

And decide what you will do with this material. Tag your notes for your current and upcoming projects and add links to other notes you’ve made on the subject.

Don’t rush. This is the good stuff, remember, so take your time. Write an outline or summary. And then read the material again.

Yes, more time. But you have that time because you got rid of 95% of everything else.