How To Decide What Not To Do

Deciding what to drop is the harder skill

Prioritising gets all the attention, but a ranked list of things that shouldn't be done is still a bad plan.

Most overloaded lists are overloaded because nothing ever leaves — items are deferred rather than declined, and deferral is not a decision.

The three questions

Is this actually mine? Plenty of items are someone else's work that arrived in your list through a conversation. Give it back.

What happens if it's never done? Not delayed — never. If you can't name a consequence, that's the answer.

Would I take this on today? Judge it as a new request rather than something you're already committed to. Sunk cost keeps a lot of dead work alive.

Decline properly

Silently not doing something is the expensive version, because whoever's waiting keeps planning around it.

Say it once: "I'm not going to get to this — do you want to reassign it or drop it?" That takes ten seconds and removes the item from your list and their expectation simultaneously.

Make it a routine

Once a month, read the whole list and delete anything carried for over a month without action.

It will feel reckless the first time. It won't the second, because almost nothing you deleted came back.