Posts Tagged: action quotes

Do it. Now.

I was sitting at the bar of a busy restaurant and pub. Unengaged with the televisions and conversations, I really started to pay attention to the bartender taking orders from customers and servers, dashing from one side to the other, and pouring dozens of drinks every minute.

I thought to myself, “he’s going to forget about my drink… and he’ll never remember what that waitress just asked for.”

But as I watched him, he didn’t seem to miss anything. His tactic was pretty simple: do it now. Instead of trying to memorize or write every little thing down, he just took care of it right away in the order he received it. He rarely had more than two or three items in his mental to-do list because he was getting things done right away.

Maybe this tactic doesn’t apply to every scenario, but it can be applied to most daily tasks. For every task that takes less than 5 minutes, just do it now. Don’t let it take up space on your to-do list. Leave the to-do list for the important stuff.

“When we commit to action, to actually doing something rather than feeling trapped by events, the stress becomes manageable.”  ~Greg Anderson