Good morning here in the beautiful city of Oxford where I have come for a pre-Christmas visit to my aunt, and this week my post will be briefer.

I have just finished my new habit/task ignited by changing one word and I am impressed so far with the results. Intrigued and want to know more? well, it’s surprisingly simple.

We all have to-do lists, and we all know that to-do lists, in terms of getting things done can be like a pack of cards. You shuffle things around, move things onto the back burner and shuffle again, so the tasks are at the top of the pack. Then you put the cards away until you get them out again a week later and realise nothing major has really budged. You have remembered that but forgotten something else. A new pressing job has come into play, and you put that as a priority. This gets done but the harder stuff, like accounts and emails for me, just gets pushed back for another week.

Emails are one task that I was, note the past tense, hopeless at sorting out. So, I changed one word on my tasks board at home. The to-do list became my accountability list. People can have accountability partners to hold themselves accountable for getting things done. However, I have never asked anyone to do this because I don’t want to burden them with another task, i.e. managing me.

How to Bridge the Gap between trying and doing.

No, I must learn to manage myself more effectively. As a start, I put at the top of my accountability list, delete 50 emails and unsubscribe to one until you have smashed the 4000 emails sitting in your inbox commencing the week of 4th November. Reduce, clear, unsubscribe, repeat and don’t let yourself down. And it has worked and not only that, the 50 emails deletion have become 100 and the one unsubscribing has turned into two. My inbox is now currently is sitting at just over 2000.

I now have an inbox not on red alert anymore because it is nearly full and by streamlining what I really want to keep on my mailing list I am reducing the mental clutter of information overload. I waste a lot of time clearing this word pile down when it could be spent elsewhere. Up to now, it’s been highly inefficient, hot and cold and hit and miss.

What’s next.

The next task is to pick one area of the many subscribers I sign up to and hone in on that one bite-sized piece of news. That will be next week’s accountability.

For next week, I am preparing two work meetings to go over some of the features here in this blog, among other plans, as next year I am completely revamping my professional website. This includes evaluating all my work to date with some important changes on where I want to focus my efforts.

 Therefore, I have decided to take next week off my blog and concentrate on what needs to be done. This will be time well spent.

I will be back in two weeks.

Until then, I leave you with my favourite walk here at Shotover Country Park, a location of my youth and a place of many special memories.