Tonight I will do this - a simple action list.

Taken from a blog of someone who has a book coming out which I think I will buy if on Kindle. 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

Distinguishing the “trivial many” from the “vital few” can be applied to every kind of human endeavor and has been done so persuasively by Richard Koch, author of several books on how to apply the Pareto Principle to everyday life. Indeed, the examples are everywhere.

Think of Sir Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, who discovered that just 700 words make up two-thirds of our language (further validated by Zipf's Law).

Think of Warren Buffett’s philosophy, quoted by Mary Buffett and David Clark in The Tao of Warren Buffett, “You only have to do a few things right in your life, so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” 

The authors continue, “Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the business that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”

Now that IS a book I have read. And took to heart. 

The advice in there is similar to what can happen with software and mobile apps - two things I love - as often you can have an app that tries to do too many things and therefore does nothing well. The same can be said for software and even computer games. Often simple is best. 

Which is something we are finding out at JusTaxi - Manchester's taxi fare comparison app - as under my (and others) thinking we removed half of the screens and at least two features / functions. This resulted in a 200% increase in numbers of people booking the best taxi prices in Manchester on our app.  

On a different but similar vein, about not being overwhelmed, Greg McKeown who wrote this article says - he recommends a simple action list.

1. Before you leave the office today, write down your top six priorities for tomorrow on a Post-it note.

2. Cross off the bottom five.

3. Write down your priority on a Post-it note and put it on your computer.

4. Schedule a 90-minute window to work on your top priority — preferably the first thing of the day.

5. Every time you are about to check email, Facebook, Twitter etc., write down what you are about to do.

Let's see how this goes.