Just do it (now)
A few weeks ago I was at the Nike outlet store in New Hampshire and I saw a classic t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Just Do It.” This simple phrase is arguably the best marketing slogan of all time. Can you think of a slogan that captures the brand and mission of a company better than “Just Do It”?
I’m wearing my ‘Just Do It’ t-shirt today (it’s 90 degrees here in Boston), and it got me thinking about how I can apply the “Just do it” mantra to my everyday work.
Are you like me in that you have a list of things to do that never seems to get done? I keep my to-do list in a handy-dandy web application and I prioritize by things I need to do “Now” versus things I need to do “Soon” or “Later.” It’s amazing to see that some of the items on my “Later” list have been there for many, many months. So why haven’t I gotten to them yet?
I wonder if I were to add up all of the time that I’ve spent reading those tasks on my to-do list how much time I’ve wasted. Rather than spending those 5 seconds to process the item on my list, I could have simply used that time to start making progress on the item. I’ve done this with my email inbox many times too. Rather than handling an email right away, I’ll let it fester in my inbox. I’m always more effective when I touch an email only once.
So today I’ve been trying to handle a bunch of things using the “Just Do it now” mantra. It’s been a productive day. I’ve cleaned out my inbox, responded to a bunch of things that I had let linger, and I even knocked a few things off of my long-standing to-do list.
It’s been an interesting experiment. If you’re like me and have a long-standing to do list and an inbox full of emails you haven’t handled, try the “Just Do it Now” approach. And let me know how it goes.
