MYN: Getting Control and Letting Go

Dec 7, 2015

One way to look at the MYN system is to think of it as a process of getting control and letting go. You already know that the MYN task list gets you in control of work (and life) because it ensures you capture all incoming action requests and prevents them from dropping through the cracks.

The letting go part may be new to you. It comes from this: MYN forces you to de-prioritize things that don’t stack up against higher priorities—and that allows you to let go of those lower priority things. It forces de-prioritizing in three ways:

  • First, due to FRESH prioritization you find that older things, as they lose energy, automatically drop down in your list where you are less likely to unnecessarily worry about them. Unless you take the effort (and commitment) to promote them back up to the top of your list, they appropriately drop out of sight (but you can still review them later if needed).
  • Second, by having size limits on each urgency zone section in MYN, you are forced to draw the line and limit what you will focus on each day or week. You let go of the rest (until a lower priority review cycle kicks in).
  • Third, by providing rules and tools in MYN to schedule when you review various levels of urgency, you lower the impact that the list has on you. You don’t over manage the list because you don’t review the wrong things at the wrong times.

It’s very important that you do let go of lower priority items, otherwise they clog up your task list and clog up your attention. They lead to an unnecessary feeling of overwhelm, and that feeling can corrupt your ability to focus clearly. You start working on anything that happens to be in front of you and eventually everything becomes a fire drill.

So embrace the letting go aspect of MYN. Follow the size rules and review rules, schedule tasks off your current list appropriately, and allow yourself to focus on a nice, compact, doable list.

Michael

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