The To Don't List

On the plane to DC I had a chance to catch up on some manifesto type readings from Change This which basically re-packages interesting essays from A-listers into pretty PDFs and puts them on the site. Short, compelling and thought provoking they are perfect reading for bumpy plane rides over hostile territory when you’ve only had 3 hours sleep. You can always pull something interesting out of each issue (one every 2 weeks) and often its pretty good, very applicable stuff. Certainly noteworhty..

Anyhow, Tom Peters recently put out his This I Believe manifesto which is a list of 60 rules, a rule for each year he’s been alive (not a bad idea actually). There are some pretty solid ideas in there, but I found one particularly compelling: The To Don’t List

Fact #1 We all have like 50 genuine priorities Fact #2 If you get 5 Big Things done over a few years, you done good

Axiom #1 What we choose not to do is at least as important, if not more important, than what we choose to do.

It’s actually a pretty obvious though powerful idea. Try putting it into practice though. I actually found coming up with a To Don’t list much harder than I thought.

So, what’s on your To Don’t list? Or what should be? (nb: reading my blog doesn’t count ).