Make a ” stop doing lists” instead of “to-do list”

Berkshire Hathaway, CEO and Chairman Billionaire Warren Buffett, the second richest person in the world says “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful person say no to almost everything.”

Most ambitious people want to accomplish things as we are driven by results, doing more, learning things, getting promoted and even starting new ventures. According to Buffett, we have to know what to shoot for to simplify our lives, which means saying no over and over again to the unimportant things flying in our direction every day and remaining focused on saying yes to the few things that truly matter.

Even when Steve Jobs said no to an Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 1997 he supported this notion, by saying “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are there. You have to pick carefully. I‘m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done compared to the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, once suggested that instead of to-do lists, we should make “stop doing “lists. If we obsess too much over to-do lists full of things that don’t really matter, we spend less time saying yes to the thing that does.

Really successful people say no to opportunities and things that don’t excite them, speak to their values, superficial networking events in which people swap business cards and never hear from one another. Successful people never network but build relationships. They also say no to spending time with negative critical people who drag them down. As time is precious choose only a small circle of people who will energise you and challenge you to be better. Successful people are not workaholics and delegate.

According to Buffett “You’ve got to keep control of your time as you can’t unless you say no. Write down a list of your top 25 career goals and circle five most important goals that truly speak to you, and the rest 20 goals are lower and not urgent priorities and any effort invested in them steals away dedicated focus and energy from your five highest-priority goals. You should put all your effort and focus on achieving the five goals as the rest are merely distractions that will get in the way of your reaching your ultimate success.