Category 3 stuff

Apropos my recent blog about planning ahead...  I got some comments which make me want to write a little more about what I mean about planning ahead and commiting to stuff in the future.

I usually say there are 3 categories of stuff. Category 1 is the stuff you absolutely have to do for survival (like work and pay your rent).  Category 2 is the stuff you really want to do because it's what you love and what makes your heart sing.

Category 3 is all the inbetween stuff. And by inbetween stuff I mean all the stuff you don't absolutely have to do. Category 3 is stuff you think you "should" do or stuff you think other people think you "should" do. Or category 3 could be stuff you think you "could" do if you had time or stuff you "might" do... in other words it's not stuff you absolutely must do and it's not stuff you love to do.

Now if you are stressed and you look at your life, I guarantee you that you have lots of category 3 stuff in your life and that's why you are stressed. I have found that a great way to make life better and cut down on stress is to start by eliminating the category 3 stuff. It's amazing what happens when you do that. It's also an amazing process to just identify all the stuff you are doing and find out which category the stuff belongs in.

And then take a really really good look at all the category 3 stuff in your life. Is there any of it that you really need to do? How about being good to yourself for a change and drop category 3 for a while and see what happens! This also removes a lot of the problems around planning ahead because there is so much stuff you're simply not going to be doing anymore!