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Don’t major in minor things …

• Most people fail in life because they major in minor things. Tony Robbins
• We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.  Jim Rohn
• Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. Francis Chan
• Effectiveness,  Productivity,  Efficiency,  Clarity,  Put first things first,  Planning

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… or let minor things steal your life

• Do not let the endless succession of small things crowd great ideals out of sight and out of mind. Charlotte Mason
• Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else. Rumi
• What you haven’t done is the price you paid for what you have done. Was it worth the price?  Mark Twain
• Focus is what happens when you stop letting yourself get distracted by the unimportant things. Celestine Chua
• Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter leastJohann Wolfgang von Goethe
• We create stress for ourselves because you feel like you have to do it. You have to. I don’t feel that anymore. Oprah Winfrey
• Stop allowing your day-to-day life to be clouded by busy nothingness. Steve Maraboli
• Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. Og Mandino

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Instead, focus on what is important …

• If you are exceptionally selective and find the few things that matter deeply to you, life acquires a purpose and meaning way beyond what it had previously, when you were somewhat concerned about a large number of issues. Richard Koch
• Do less, and you’ll force yourself to choose between what’s just busywork, and what really matters. Life then becomes effortless, as you accomplish big things while being less busy. Leo Babauta
• Focus

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… and ruthlessly dump what is unimportant

• To detonate your time revolution, slow down. Stop worrying. Do fewer things. Chuck your to do list, make a not to do list. Act less, think more. Reflect on what really matters to you. Stop doing anything that isn’t valuable, that doesn’t make you happy. Savor life. Swim against the tide of acceleration. Be unconventional, even eccentric. Purge your dairy. Dump your cell phone. Stop going to meetings or events that bore you. Reclaim your time for yourself and people who care about you. Richard Koch
• If something is important to you, attend to it immediately, and regularly. If something is not really important to you, that’s great also – just scratch it off your to-do list forever, and never worry about it again.  Choose how you invest your time, and honor your choices.  Jonathan Lockwood Huie
• Nuke it! The most efficient way to get through a task is to delete it. If it doesn’t need to be done, get it off your to do list. Steve Pavlina
• Find what matters most to you, and eliminate as much of the rest as possible. Leo Babauta
• When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.
• It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential. Bruce Lee
• Now and then it’s good to list all the things you regularly do for which there was once a good reason. Robert Brault
• What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do. Aristotle
• It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich. Henry Ward Beecher
• Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat. Timothy Ferriss
• My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do. Francine Jay

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Life is better when you don’t try to do everything

• You will miss a ton, but that’s OK. We’re so caught up in trying to do everything, experience all the essential things, not miss out on anything important that we forget the simple fact that we cannot experience everything. That physical reality dictates we’ll miss most things. We can’t read all the good books, watch all the good films, go to all the best cities in the world, try all the best restaurants, meet all the great people. But the secret is: life is better when we don’t try to do everything. Learn to enjoy the slice of life you experience, and life turns out to be wonderful. Leo Babauta

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Eliminating the unimportant brings much greater focus to your life

• Focus is what happens when you stop letting yourself get distracted by the unimportant things. Celestine Chua
• Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do. John Carmack

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Eliminating the unimportant makes you more available to real challenges

• Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow! Og Mandino

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If you don’t focus on what is important, you can easily fall into the trap of unproductive busyness…

• Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Timothy Ferriss
• The time spent on any matter is usually inversely proportional to its importance. C. Northcote Parkinson
• Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. Timothy Ferriss
• Love of bustle is not industry. Seneca
• Life seems nothing more than a quick succession of busy nothings. From the movie Mansfield Park
• Don’t mistake activity with achievement. John Wooden
• We create stress for ourselves because you feel like you have to do it. You have to. I don’t feel that anymore. Oprah Winfrey
• When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another- and ourselves. Jack Kornfield
• Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference.  Being busy is often a form of mental laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.  Tim Ferris
• If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy. Proverb
• Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. H Williams
• Busyness

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…which can lead to a great waste of life’s potential

• Stop allowing your day-to-day life to be clouded by busy nothingness. Steve Maraboli
• Beware the barrenness of a busy life. Socrates
• Busyness is the narcotic of the mediocre.
• One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all. Brian Tracy
• Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight. Thomas Carlyle
• There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. Peter Drucker
• Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Henry David Thoreau
• Potential,  Waste

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Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do

• We began to realise that it’s as important to figure out what you’re not going to do as it is to know what you are going to do. Michael Dell
• Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. Steve Jobs
• The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone. Oswald Chambers
• No really, just stop it. If you’re going to realize your intentions, what you stop doing is just as important as what you want to start and continue to do. This is where “quitting” crosses over to enlightenment. Stopping = the white space. Stopping = room to run free and create from the deepest place of being without restraint or compromise. Stopping = more time for what matters most.   Danielle LaPorte
• In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich. Henry Ward Beecher
• Decision making

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Quit what is not important

• Quitting is not giving up, it’s choosing to focus your attention on something more important. Quitting is not losing confidence, it’s realizing that there are more valuable ways you can spend your time. Quitting is not making excuses, it’s learning to be more productive, efficient and effective instead. Quitting is letting go of things (or people) that are sucking the life out of you so you can do more things that will bring you strength. Osayi Osar- Emokpae

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Be willing to give things up to do what you really care about

• It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What’s hard, she said, is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about. Shauna Niequist

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Realise that the art of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone

• The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone. Stella, Lady Reading
• Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of the nonessentials. Lin Yutang
• Getting Things Done

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Create a stop-doing list

• Sometimes our stop-doing list needs to be bigger than our to-do list. Patti Digh

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Give up bubble gum activities

• Give up bubble gum activities: You know bubblegum; it is sweet and juicy until the taste runs out and you can fill it with hot air to impress others. It has little if any nutritional value, but you go for the next piece anyway to continue the habitual process of chewing.

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Ask yourself, “Is this necessary?”

• Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’  Marcus Aurelius

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Ask yourself if you’re being productive or just active

• The essential question is not, “How busy are you?’ but ‘What are you busy at?’ ‘Are you doing what fulfils you? Oprah Winfrey
• Am I being productive or just active? Timothy Ferriss
• It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about? Henry David Thoreau
• Productivity

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Bear the uncertainty of having nothing to do for a while

• Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing. Lao Tzu
• It is worse to busy yourself with the trivial than to do nothing. Baltasar Gracian
• The only reason you do not do great things is because you timidly cling to small things. Will you let loose of small things and bear the uncertainty of having nothing for a while?  Do this and eventually you will do great things.  Vernon Howard
• Letting go of the need for certainty

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Don’t be afraid to say “no”

• You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.” Stephen Covey
• A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. Mahatma Gandhi
• And saying “no” gets easier with practice, especially as you gain confidence that sticking to the essential is something that will have great benefits to you in the long term.  Leo Babauta
• Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough. Josh Billings
• Don’t spread yourself too thin. Learn to say no politely and quickly.    Jackson Brown Jr.
• Sometimes saying ‘no’ to one thing means leaving room for ‘yes’ in other areas. Christine Louise Hohlbaum
• Learn to say “no”

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