Tracy Phaup Group

I get butterflies in my stomach just writing about it!

But that's part of the power in Creating Your Own Skip Day - it will help you sift out the time consuming addictions that you use to avoid from the daily habits that actually help you get valuable work done.

Any way you slice it this will be an eye opening exercise for you.

1. Skip incomplete projects - permanently.

You'll be surprised during your Skip Day at how you will naturally gravitate towards some of the projects that you've been procrastinating on, but you're going to want to approach them with your new Skip Day mentality, too.

Ask yourself, 'Are they really even worth doing, or should I permanently Skip the idea?'

2. Skip reading.

Anything. Memos, books, trade journals - you name it - if it's reading - skip it.

Emails? Skip reading those, too.

And no - I don't just mean save them for later. Skip them permanently - as in delete. ALL of them.

Especially anything older than a month. Trust me; if you haven't used it by now the odds are good that you won't ever use them. If it was important it's likely that it is relatively easy to recreate.

3. Skip watching the news.

4. Skip listening to negative people.

I'd even invite you to be transparent about it and help them become partners in the process. You can let coworkers, friends and family know ahead of time what you'll be doing.

Get approached by a negative person anyway? You can still share what's going on with you without being insensitive to their plight. It can sound something like "Hey; I'm sorry to hear you've been having a rough time and I do care about that, but I'm doing something different today I'd like to tell you about. It's called a Skip Day and one of the things I need to skip is anything that's not positive, so maybe we can talk again tomorrow and maybe you'd even like to have a Skip Day too in the meantime."

5. Skip cleaning anything.

6. Skip watching TV.

That includes movies, too.

7. Skip using the computer.

8. Skip using your cell phone.

9. Skip one other daily habit - at least!

Or better yet - pick 10 more and double dip on your skip day!

10. But DON'T SKIP evaluating your Skip Day and what you learned from it at the end of the day.

How did the day go? What surprised you about the day? What made it easier? Harder? Was it a valuable exercise? Would it be valuable to repeat sometime? Was it uncomfortable? What are the lessons you learned that you can carry forward into your regular days both at home and at work?