I quit.

I was about halfway through the book when my mind was drifting. As many times as I tried to read the passage again, the content just wasn’t resonating with me. So much of what I had been reading wasn’t anything new or interesting to me. While the book was one I hadn’t read before, the content was a bloated series of facsimiles of the same ideas over and over. The different names and situations were almost indistinguishable.

So there I was, halfway through the book with a critical decision: do I keep on dredging through in hopes of finding value? Or do I just quit? The indicators were obvious that I was unlikely to gain value worth my time if I invested in in suffering through the next 150 so odd pages, so I quit.

It’s okay to quit. In fact, it’s healthy to do it quickly. Too often, in life, and business, we fall pray to the sunk cost fallacy that we somehow owe it to ourselves, other, or the universe to finished whatever it is we’ve started. But, the truth of the matter is that while we can never have back the time or money that we’ve already invested, we can choose where every minute or dollar that follows goes.

When the going gets tough, keep on going. But when the going gets pointless, go somewhere else.

What did you learn from 2013?

We’re all full of great ideas. Sadly, we will fail to write most of them down. The majority of those that we will do end up trying will probably fail, and the ones that were successful? Well, we’ll never know why they worked, but we can always go back and find out why failures failed.

The end of any calendar year is the best opportunity to collect your notes, get yourself organized and size up your last twelve months. Did you accomplish your goals? Did you make progress on your multi-year goals? Do you feel that your time was well spent? What do you regret? What do you wish you had done?

For both your business and personal lives, this time of the year is the perfect opportunity to take stock of what you did, what you did well, and what you wish you did better.

What did you learn from 2013?

How to Get Things Done

Everyone likes getting things done. There is a simple but rewarding sense of gratification once you can mark something off of your list.

Take for example making your bed. You might say in your head, “oh I don’t see any sense in making my bed, I’m going to move all of the pillows and get under the covers anyhow.” In the morning when you have a million things to do, you might not realize the benefit of making your bed and consider it something that doesn’t really need to be taken care of.

My brother taught me something a while ago, if you make your bed every morning, not matter how bad your day was, no matter how little you are able to accomplish, or whatever setbacks you face, when you return home to your bed to retire, you will be rewarded with one thing where everything is in its place, pleasing and relaxing. You will be rewarded for your smallest investment and it may be your day’s greatest achievement.

Making your bed serves as a good example of what you can accomplish when you commit yourself to your goals. Keeping track of them, though is another story. If all you had to do every day was make your bed, brush your teeth, shower and go to work, you wouldn’t have much trouble keeping track of it. Unless you’re playing Will Farrell’s role in Stranger Than Fiction, that’s probably not the case, though.

In order to accomplish of the millions of things that we task ourselves with, we need to keep track of them.

We know that the human brain is powerful, in fact it is the most efficient computing device in the world, capable of of processing 2.2 billion megaflops on only 20 watts of energy. However, despite its efficiency, it isn’t always the most organized means of storage.

Sometimes we need to rely on ancient technology to tackle of some the hardest tasks.

What am I proposing? Taking a drastic measure. Uninstall your apps, ditch the Task manager in Outlook, stop fretting over your Gmail tasks not syncing with your phone and leave Evernote to tracking minutes from meetings.

What I am proposing is that you get a sheet of paper and a writing utensil and write down the things that you need to get done.

Image Courtesy of Betsy Weber by Creative Commons 2.0

Nothing will give you the satisfaction of getting things done better than taking a pen and striking a line through them as you accomplish them. As more of your tasks become completed, you will see your progress by the growing number of strike-throughs on your page. Unlike software, those completed tasks that you spent your time and effort on won’t simply disappear or transfer to your recycle bin, they will remain on the page as a visual reminder of your accomplishments.

As the page grows and more and more is crossed out, give yourself a pat on the back, you’re getting things done.