This is great! Would love to hear your thoughts!
The Two Most Important Lists You’ll Ever Keep
May 19th, 2009 @ 6:38 am
It’s time to create two lists, arguably the only two you’ll need to keep focused at work.
- Things That Keep Me Up At Night.
- Reasons I Get Up In The Morning.
According to Alan M. Webber, blogging on Harvard Business Publishing, the items you put on these lists helps define who you are — the first step toward becoming a better manager.
“Managers and leaders have got to know themselves before they know their businesses,” writes Webber. “They’ve got to have passion for their work and concern for their world. Otherwise they’re just punching the time clock and risking everyone’s future.”
Webber includes this advice in a larger post on the topic of what business schools should be teaching their students. It jumped out at me as a worthy exercise to help many of us gain perspective as well as keep our priorities straight.
Writing my own lists, I was struck at how much the recession is both keeping me up at night (for example, worry over what the economy is doing to people I know both financially and psychologically) as well as fueling my creative energy (using simplicity and focus to leverage fewer resources into more productivity). I wonder, is there something I can do to move more ‘keep me up’ items to the ‘reasons to go to work’ side of the ledger?
This is an interesting concept and I am sure the list can be quite revealing about our personalities. But, I try not to think of what keeps me up at night.
The secret to a good nights sleep is not to make lists of what I didn’t accomplish today and what I need to do tomorrow. That is a sure way not to sleep at night.
As far as reasons to get up in the morning – forget it! I really do not need a list. I cant wait to wake up in the morning and be thankful for another wonderful day on this earth. My list would be so long if I even started, I would never sleep at night!
By: slgreatsuccess on July 4, 2009
at 6:04 pm
Thank you so much for your response and right on for overcoming “lists” entirely and living in gratitude. All the great masters teach this principle and we all have the possibility of growing into consistently living the principle of “lists” not controlling us. Sometimes the first step to eliminating lists is to identify what lists there are running our lives…:) be well and keep sharing with us! happinesschick
By: happinesschick on July 4, 2009
at 6:52 pm