Marissa Mayer Explains Why You Don’t Need To Finish Your To-Do List

Ever get the feeling you’re never going to reach the end of your to-do list? According to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, that could actually be a good thing.

Picture: Getty Images

Speaking at the recent Salesforce.com conference in Las Vegas, Mayer explained how advice from a college friend had convinced her that finishing a to-do list wasn’t always essential:

She said, ‘Look, I just make a to-do list every day in priority order from most important to least important and celebrate the fact that I’d never get to the bottom of it, because if I did, I would have spent a bunch of time doing relatively unimportant things.’

I thought that was really profound; a lot of people say, ‘Gosh, I’d never get it all done’, and when they see all the work they could never get done, they get really overwhelmed by it. But the other thing you could do is just embrace it.

The satisfaction of crossing off an item from your list is profound — but the satisfaction of deleting it shouldn’t be underestimated either.

MARISSA MAYER: Time Management Is About Priorities, Embracing The Never-ending To-Do List, And Sometimes Changing In The Car [Business Insider]


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