We all have to-do lists. They may be in our head, written down on paper, or on our laptop – but we all have a set of tasks that have been assigned to us. Some tasks are ones that are self generated, but the majority come at us from outside influences – our boss, co-workers, spouse, friends, etc. What content makes up the list and what physical form the list takes on varies from person to person, but we all have them.

The list that many are missing is a stop-doing list. At first, the thought of a stop-doing list sounds like it may be a joke at best or the idea of a lazy couch potato at worst. We are often taught that the person who gets the most tasks checked off in a day wins, and so this idea just doesn’t sit right with many at first. However research today like studies published in “The Myth of Multitasking” by David Crenshaw show how switching back and forth between tasks all day cause a “substantial lag” in brain power that ultimately makes us less productive.

All resources are scarce, but the ones in shortest supply will always be time and money (in that order). The stop-doing list forces us to separate the important tasks from the merely urgent ones and in doing so gives us the best opportunity to have a higher ROI (return on investment) and ROE (return on energy).

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great said in a 2003 USA Today article that he thought the best New Year’s resolution for many would be a stop-doing list. Stephen Covey said “I find that most people do not do long-term planning; rather, they plan for the very short-term and, because of it, are driven by the urgent.” A stop-doing list, even if only focused on the short term will have long term benefits.

Steve Jobs at this year’s D8 conference made the following statement “Apple is a company that doesn’t have the most resources of everybody in the world… the way we’ve succeeded is by choosing what horses to ride…” Over the years Apple’s stop-doing list has included floppy drives (they left them out of the first iMac and never looked back), CD-Roms (left out of the MacBook Air), and the keyboard (the iPhone and iPad). “Sometimes when we get rid of things… people call us crazy,” he said “but sometimes you just have to pick the things that look like they’re going to be the right horses to ride going forward.” Horses really are a good analogy because riding more than one horse at a time is a daring feat indeed. If you want to ride another horse you have to dismount the one you’re on first.

Often people are surprised to learn that I have a full time social media / online content creator on my marketing team, that I just bought six new Flip cameras for my sales people to use in the field with customers, that we are in the process of creating not one but four new websites, or that we have a dedicated online sales person. They wouldn’t be nearly as surprised if they knew all that we have stopped doing. When I joined the company in 2007, our marketing budget was 2.5 million – today it is just over 1.5 million. That’s a lot of stopping. The result? Our market share is up from 7% to 23%, our traffic is up nearly 30%, and we are having our best year of sales since the company was founded twenty-six years ago. Personally, my favorite result is that my builder knows that I value his money like my own and trusts me to invest it wisely.

As a marketing professional are you still riding a horse that’s likely to die soon? Here’s a test – what percentage of your budget is spent on print advertising versus development of your online presence? Do you have a stop-doing list that forces you (and your boss) to acknowledge the limited resources of time and money? Another test – name the last initiative or project that you intentionally put the brakes on (here’s the catch) even while it still performed “ok.” The sooner you create your stop-doing list, the sooner you can focus your time and money on doing something great for your company.