Do It or Ditch It: How I'm Ending the Year with Clarity

This is the time of year when I start planning for next year. If I leave it until December, it gets swallowed up in the crush of holiday activities. I already have much of 2027 planned for Harp Mastery®, but I also have to plan what's happening for me.

My word for the year

I often start my planning with a word. My word for 2026 was actually two words: magic beans. The idea was that I had everything I needed to grow. All I had to do was plant those beans and take care of them, and the growth would take care of itself. I've done a pretty good job with that.

The hardest part was that for them to grow, I had to clear a space, which meant a lot of weeding. (If you looked at the actual garden in front of my house right now, you'd see I still have plenty of weeding to do. It's kind of a jungle. 😱) But the weeding that matters for Harp Mastery, for my own harp playing, and for my life has been tricky.

This kind of weeding means answering the question: What do I do, and what do I ditch? What do I keep, and what isn't serving me anymore? Where am I spending time that isn't serving the cause I'm trying to serve?

The purple pen test

Right now, I'm thinking about how to end the year strong and give my magic beans all the room they need in these last two months. So I sat down and made a list of everything I wanted to do, harp and personal, including my favorite holiday traditions. Believe me, it was long. (I didn't include anything I knew I'd do anyway. Everything on the list was something I had a choice about.)

It was immediately obvious they weren't all going to happen in the last two months of the year. So I took my purple pen and started crossing things off one by one, asking: If I could only do 5 things, would this be one of them? Then: If I could only do 3? And finally, with my last three: If I could only do one, which would it be? That's the one I circled.

Then I added things back, starting with my final 3 and final 5, until I had about 10 or 12 things and thought, that's enough. The rest I had to make sure I could ditch without feeling regretful, without feeling I was losing something important.

So I ended up with one thing that must happen and a short list of things to do and to ditch. That's how the rest of my year is going to go, and I can't tell you the relief that clarity brings.

What's the one thing on my list I circled? My daily practice time. When I practice, the world is a better place for me. If I let other things steal my practice time, I get very grumpy.

Four guidelines for deciding what to do and what to ditch

Deciding what to do and what to ditch doesn't have to be a laborious process. In fact, it needs to be simple. Here are four guidelines you can use to make your choices clear.

1. If other people are counting on you to do it, DO it. But before you put it on your list, consider whether you could delegate that responsibility to someone else or defer it to a later time. A little creative thinking can save you lots of angst.
2. If it's something you feel you should do, DITCH it. If it were that crucial or imperative, at least at this moment, you would have already done it.
3. If you truly want to do it now, DO it. Be aware that you may have to sacrifice something else on your schedule in order to make it happen.
4. Harness the power of LATER. Just because you have to do it, want to do it, or should do it isn't a good enough reason to do it now.

So, what are you going to do, and what are you going to ditch? 🤔

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