Just because someone Pings, doesn’t mean you have to Pong.

I was reminded of this as I paged thru one of my favorite books this evening, Dont Sweat The Small Stuff and It Is All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson.

He puts it this way. If someone throws you the ball, you don’t have to catch it. There are many applications to this but I think you get the point. We don’t have to join the debate, we don’t have to solve the problems of others, we don’t have to answer the phone if we don’t want to.

In business this advice is echoed in another one of my favorite books, The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey. In this book we see the overworked manager trying to do too much, much of it belonging to others.

One of the secrets of a happy life is captured nicely in an old Chinese proverb.

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists of eliminating the non-essentials.”

Think about it.

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