Is it just me, or does it seem that life keeps speeding up? Do you have more and more things to do, but less and less time to get them done? One surefire way to dig your way out of this hole is to eliminate things from your to-do list. But how to do that without having things fall apart?

Here are five questions that will help you understand the tasks you must do versus those you’ve fallen into a trap of thinking you must do.

Five Questions to Ask About Every Item on Your To-Do List  

1. What will I gain by completing this task? Is the result something that I value now, or something that I DID value back when I incorporated this task into my schedule?
   
   
2. What will happen if I don’t get this done? Is the outcome of this task valuable to me? Can I quantify it?
   
   
3. Am I the best person to do this? Should I offload this to someone else who has more time or is better qualified to do this? 
   
   
4. How will I know when this task is really complete? What is my stopping point?
   
   
5. What would happen if I removed this from my list? Could I make better use of the time doing something else? What happens if I just cross this off my list?