Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.
— David Allen
I don’t celebrate Christmas; I celebrate Chanukah, and that holiday ended early in December. So, I’m already thinking about the New Year. Not that the secular New Year is a Jewish holiday, but I enjoy any holiday that asks me to reassess my life, to look at my past actions and met or unmet goals and to set new intentions.
After completing my yearly physical yesterday, and being told once again that my blood pressure hovers at a borderline high level and that I should do something other than takes medications to reduce my migraines–like exercise, meditate and go for weekly massages–I found myself considering how to reduce my stress level. That’s when I discovered the above quote from David Allen in an email. “That’s the ticket,” I thought.
Well, I know I still need to do the other things, but right there in those two sentences Allen had pinpointed a huge source of my stress. I have started so many projects and never finished them. And…I continue to start new ones while the others remain unfinished.
In 2011, it is my intention to systematically complete my unfinished projects. I don’t even care what that entails financially, because money has tended to be my excuse for not completing some of them. And I will make time; time has been another excuse.
What about you? Will you make time this year to finish what you have started–and thereby reduce your to-do list and, subsequently, your stress level?
