How to Stop Wasting Your Time and Effort

We tend to come up with impressive to-do lists. And I admit I do this, too!

I get inspired with all the stuff I am going to do:

• I’m going to start a podcast
• I’m going to do a Facebook live every single day
• I’m going to publish an article
• I’m going to set up 10 funnels

And this is a great list to start with. But there’s a problem!

You need to make room for what you want to do by eliminating what isn’t really needed. So, once we have a to-do list, our goal is to know: 

1. What to eliminate

and 

2. How to eliminate it

Let me tell you a quick story to illustrate what I’m talking about.

Imagine waking up this morning in your pajamas. Instead of taking your pajamas off, you just put on your clothes over them.

Then you go to the gym, work out, and get really sweaty.

You come home, take a shower, but you never take your clothes off.

Then you put on yet another layer of clothes and go about the rest of your day. As a result, you will be wearing three sets of clothes! 

When it’s time for bed, you put on another set of pajamas.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Yes, it is, but I believe it sums up pretty well the problem we have when we don’t ‘eliminate’ what we no longer need. By the way, this was a lesson I learned from my friend Duke Clark that really hit home with me when he explained it this way.

The idea here is: 

• If you never take off your clothes before putting on new ones, within two days, you will be totally immobilized.

This leads us to the question of how to eliminate what you no longer can, or need to, do.

Before you can take something new on, you have to take something old off.

What I recommend you to do is to set up two lists.

List 1: Things you must do

List 2: Things you’re not going to do anymore

The easiest thing to not do anymore is spending hours watching TV or scrolling social media.

That alone will give you back many hours every week.

That works for anything you want to do in your personal or business life. 

A specific example in my business is not too long ago I needed to eliminate one of my membership sites to have more time for other things on my to-do list.

This was hard because I have a partner there, and I don’t want to abandon that person. 

But after some brainstorming, I discovered a way to integrate instead of eliminate. This means that I won’t part ways with the person who was helping with that site. Instead, I will find other ways to collaborate, while still eliminating that membership site from my list of “things I must do.”

The biggest thing you need to understand is that to start doing something new, you’ve got to stop doing something else.

Otherwise, you will suffer, your family will suffer, and your health will suffer.

Suffering is inevitable when you’re trying to do everything!

The way I see it is, it’s better to cut something off than to struggle to do it.

Adopt ‘Integrate or eliminate’ as your mantra. By using it you will be happier and it will save you from wasting time on what you don’t need anymore.

And…

If you’d like extra help on applying the principle of integrate or eliminate in your online business, join me at Sales Copy And Content Marketing Hacks With Jim Edwards Facebook group. Just click here to request access!

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