I’ve used this expression for years and never really thought anything of it. Guest writer Joel Canfield called me out on it last week and it got me thinking.
When you decide not to move forward with something, you have a couple choices:
You can put it “on the back burner”… where it still occupies a piece of your brain and distracts you from that which is more important.
You can kill it. Completely. Delete all related files and wipe it from your memory banks.
You can kill it… until further notice. In other words, you can pack it all up, file it, and delete it from all “to-do lists”, “action items”, etc. You have no intention to revisit it. But, on the off chance that something changes down the road and you then decided to revisit it, you can always dust off the file folder and pick up where you left off.
We have too much going on to move a great many things “to the back burner”. Be honest with yourself – does this thing deserve (a) your attention, (b) to die forever, or (c) to be removed from your field of vision, but accessible later?
I think it’s ignorant to assume we know what the future holds, but naive to assume we can tackle everything right now.
