Some people find it helpful to list tolerations by categories, such as home, work, family, computer, community, personal attitudes, and habits. Others go room-by-room through their homes, making notes. Write everything down, even if you have no clue how to fix, solve, or resolve anything. Have faith. Solutions will emerge. Learn to "step over" nothing!

If this exercise becomes too overwhelming, throw the list away when you're done. You'll still benefit from noticing time and energy wasters. Don't be surprised if over time you become less willing to take on new tolerations. Such is the power of pure awareness.

Get lasting results
Wondering where to start? Look for what I call the pivotal tolerations; those things that, once handled, will eliminate several others. For example, it may pay in the long run to buy a new car instead of new tires, a new muffler, and a new transmission to pass inspection this year.

Try to ferret out the source of your tolerations. How did the toleration get there in the first place? Pay attention to how often and to what you agree. Consider that at least some percentage of your tolerations started with a simple "Yes." Instead of being quick to add tasks, accommodate, and reschedule, learn to say, "No, thank you." Sometimes mustering the courage to tell the truth about a situation helps it get handled permanently. Maybe you just need to admit that you hate yard work, and hire someone else to do it.

How else can you eliminate tolerations? First, be committed to taking care of everything. You might also decide to invest $1000 to get all the energy-sucking minutiae handled.

You might decide to stop complaining and to make strong requests instead, like "Tell me what you need." Refuse to take on projects this month that fail to deliver almost immediate satisfaction. Is there a bad habit you're unhappy about? Just stop. Right now. You can do it!

Use your tools
There are many creative ways to use your Palm device to work on your list of tolerations. One of my fabulous clients enters all her energy drains into a "Tolerations" catetory in her ToDo List. Then, after designating urgency levels, she completes the most urgent first. She may even add a due date to each item to keep her on schedule.

You can also use urgency levels to capture the big picture. Consider designating all items that are really irking you as a level one priority. Maybe you could designate all items that would take less than 20 minutes to handle as a level two priority. Or make everything that can be resolved by spending a few dollars into a level three priority, so you can more easily determine the total cost of getting all those items handled.

Once you've handled a toleration, check it off your list. Figure A shows an example of what your list might look like.

FIGURE A

Your list of tolerations may look something like this.

My own coach suggested that I boost productivity by separating business and personal tasks. By doing this, I soon discovered that I'd been distracted by the sheer length of my To Do list and was spending precious moments between meetings on personal rather than business items. It has turned out to be more time and cost effective for me to hire someone to take care of personal chores. My next step is to hire a virtual assistant to handle all those business details.