Are you feeling tired and don’t feel like doing anything at all (during weekends and not weekdays)? If yes, then it’s time to cut down on the number of things in your to do list especially if you’ve been spending a lot of time over the past few weekends on nothing but works/errands.

Erm, this doesn’t apply to those who have been doing nothing all this while. If you are one of them… time to wake up and go do the things which matter to you!

Okay, back to topic. Actually, nowadays I do feel like just sit down, watch some movies, drink some beer, play some games, read some books and just sleep my weekends away. I think I’m feeling a little burn out. This is a result of putting too much things in my to do list. The list is getting longer and longer as I try to push things ahead of schedule.

• I try to complete more comics.
• I try to stabilize my webcomic layout.
• I try to put on my storywriter’s hat.
• I try to write more blog posts for this blog and my Novice blog.
• I try to learn Ruby on Rails and develop a new web application for my personal use.
• I try to write some product reviews to earn a bit of side income.
• I try to finish a book.

As you can see, all these things are pretty time consuming and 2 days are not enough. Maybe it is enough but I’ll be dead tired on Monday. This is a perfect example of trying to force myself to do something…perhaps too many things at one time. When you’ve reached this stage, it’s easy to just give up and sit there doing nothing. It’s just too frustrating because the list of to do will keep getting longer. It seems like it’s never ending.

Have you experienced something like this before? If yes, maybe the following can help a bit.

• Prioritize the list.
• Assign the long term tasks as lower priorities. For example, finishing a book can be a lower priority for me since finishing it faster doesn’t bring me any extra benefit.
• Assign the tasks which you feel can contribute to the society or tasks which you will enjoy the most as high priorities.
• Starting from the top, pick at most 2 things that you think you can finish over the weekend and try your best to complete them. If possible, just pick the first one and finish it before starting the second.
• If the task requires creative juice and you just don’t have the mood for it, then postpone it. Move on to the next task in the list. Creative works like writing (blogs, stories) and drawing can’t and should not be forced. Do them when you feel like doing.
• Most importantly, don’t push yourselves too much. If you can’t finish, don’t fret. Put it to next week and move slowly. As long as there’s progress, then it’s fine. If there’s 0 progress, take some time to reflect whether the priorities are in the right order.

Remember, never force yourselves into doing something. You’ll burn yourselves out. Prioritize and RELAX. It’s weekend, remember?

p/s…. if you don’t feel like doing anything, spending time with your family can be a very good and relaxing past time.

Have something that you really want to do but just could not find the time to do it? Or has something which you really want to do, but has been putting in on hold for many many months now?

I’ll admit it. I have that kind of problem, all the time.

Then I came across an article which actually touched on this issue. I couldn’t find the link anymore, so sorry for that. I’ll post it here once I found it.

Anyway, it talks about focusing on the priority and removing all the not-so-important tasks. I find it very useful and effective, and have actually came out with my new formula of doing things which matter. Erm, not really a formula, but few steps which allow me to focus.

1. List out all the things to do in a single day (a single week if you’re more of a weekly person or if doing it daily is too tedious for you).
2. Mark the 1 thing which you really want to complete it no matter what. It must be something which means a lot to you. You can choose to have 2 things, but preferably make it 1.
3. Remove all other things or if you cannot remove them, postpone them to later date.

Done.

I find these 3 steps to be quite useful. For example, I always find myself spending too much time in IM (Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger) and also the RSS feeds. I could actually spend the entire morning just to go through all the articles in my RSS feed. Most of those articles are beneficial (business, motivational, etc) but it wouldn’t hurt if I remove them altogether, or postpone them to a later date.

By doing these 2 simple things, I can actually free up at least 2 to 3 hours each day to do the things which matter.

It’s not that these things don’t matter. In fact, some of them are quite important. But the main point here is, will it bring any significant impact if I don’t do them TODAY or NOW? Nope.

So, why not just postpone them or just cancel them altogether?

But for those things which are really important (but not urgent), remember to complete them later. Don’t just postpone and forget about them.

Last but not least, each one of us has only 24 hours a day for us to use. If we waste it, it will never return. So, manage your time wisely and do the things which matter the most to you.

p/s……. this is another reason why I’m putting my blog schedule to Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

p/s……. for those on Twitter and Facebook, try to avoid them. It’s good if you have a USEFUL purpose. Otherwise, they really can be pretty time consuming and addictive.