Obsess about doing 'just enough', not 'as much as possible' (The Bannister Method)
➡️➡️My newest piece of work was released last month: download The Meaningful Productivity Blueprint here, and read more at the bottom of this article⬅️⬅️
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Seth Godin’s fingerprints are all over my work.
A marketing thought-leader, but much more than that, I was given one of Godin’s books at a crucial moment and have never looked back.
He recently reached the almost-too-large-to-comprehend milestone of 10,000 blog posts, publshed every day.
I’ve read a lot of them, but nowhere close to 10,000.
Of them all, there’s pretty much only one I can name. The Bannister Method.
I talk about it and think about it often.
And it’s an idea that, if you use it, can change your effectiveness, stress levels and more.
It’s powerful leverage for at least four of The Six Pillars of Meaningful Productivity (read more about those here - The Bannister Method will help you with Choice Management, Attention Management, Attitude Management and Habit Management).
You can read Godin’s (very short) post about it, here.
But in essence, the idea is this: inspired by how Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes, what if you used what we might call The Bannister Method? That is: obsess about doing just enough, rather than as much as possible.
This changes everything.
It is a definitively complexity-fit move: it focuses on enabling, not controlling.
It is a fantastic Pareto-like 80/20 move: the 20% of any task that gets you 80% of the result is almost always where you do just enough.
It reduces stress, if you can really live it, because you can actually achieve the things on your To Do list by doing ‘just enough’ on each one, instead of trying and failing to do as much as possible. Remember: there will never be enough time for everything. You are going to have to make choices. One way to deal with those two truths is to choose to do ‘just enough’.
The 12-Minute Method is a Just Enough exercise, although I didn’t realise it at the time. What if I do just one draft of almost all my articles, proof it once and post it? That’s obsessing about doing just enough. And no more.
I’ve had a number of posts over the years - like this one on branding - that I told myself needed to be ‘full length’ articles, thoroughly researched. Then one day I decided to do a 12-minute version and it turned out just enough was actually… enough.
I’ve made Just Enough pretty much a life philosophy.
When I got overwhelmed by a ridiculous challenge I’d set myself to appear on 100 Podcasts in 2022, I settled into Just Enough: ok, I’ll spend 30 minutes on this at least each week. That’s Just Enough. Any more is a bonus. Just Enough is Success. And I did it.
I had a conversation with someone once who was telling me about the incredible work he was doing to fine-tune the draft of his book. He was focused so much on excellence. On maximising the possibility of each chapter. The envy and discomfort I felt was probably a clue for me that I want some of my future projects to be like that.
But when I slow down now, a couple of years after that conversation, and notice that his book isn’t out. And then I think about me, an author of four books, all created using my version of The Bannister Method. Well, I know whose work is out in the world doing good and whose isn’t.
Maybe As Much As Possible would have been better.
But Just Enough and Out is better than As Much As Possible and Lost On a Hard Drive Somewhere.
Try The Bannister Method this week.
Make some choices about what is Just Enough for this project or that relationship or the other task.
Manage your attention by focusing on Just Enough, and not getting distracted by As Much As Possible.
Notice how you feel as you succeed at doing Just Enough on several tasks, where doing As Much As Possible on any one would have led to failure in all of them. (Because you’ll never do As Much As Possible. Because what does that even mean, anyway?)
Make it your habit to do Just Enough on something. And who knows… in a few months or years, you might have something magical.
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PS OUT NOW: The Meaningful Productivity Blueprint - my new model for taking action, reducing overwhelm and getting the things that really matter done. In it, you’ll learn about:
The Time Management Trap: why you need to STOP trying to manage your time and what to do instead.
The Six Pillars of Meaningful Productivity.
The secret to peak productivity, which I have seen used again and again by productive leaders and productivity experts.
Get the Meaningful Productivity Blueprint here.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.