As a polymath / scanner, and as an entrepreneur / business owner, there is one skill that I heavily rely on which I don’t hear many personal development gurus talking about.

It is also something that I clearly see as a differentiating factor between scanners and specialists.

What I’m referring to is the process of “significance tracking”.

By knowing what significance tracking is and applying it in your daily life, you can do less, while at the same time accomplishing more.

What Is Significance Tracking

First, let me say what significance tracking is not. Significance tracking is not the same as priority tracking in time management.

There is a subtle difference between the two, but this subtle difference can produce a world of difference in your life.

Significance tracking is basically the process of accurately determining the significance / effectiveness of any given action or task in achieving an overall goal.

The best way to understand it is through some examples.

Significance Tracking and Blogging

Let’s use the goal of building a successful Blog as an example in significance tracking.

Here is a list of possible “TODO” items someone might have in terms of building a successful Blog which they have swimming around in their heads:

• setup a newsletter opt-in box in sidebar
• sign up for email delivery service
• change links in footer
• write 3 posts per week
• comment on other blogs
• write forum posts
• optimize articles for SEO
• re-write “about me” page
• write an ebook
• do keyword research
• sign up for Adsense
• find advertisers
• setup Paypal account
• add facebook like button
• setup advertising space in sidebar
• design new logo
• design new header
• learn more about SEO
• study Analytics
• find a good source of stock images
• setup a P.O. Box
• install twitter widget
• research best digital camera to buy
• buy digital camera
• research best video camera to buy
• buy video camera
• research what equipment is needed for making videos
• learn video editing
• build links
• learn about article marketing
• learn about “nofollow” links
• contact Bob about link exchange
• interview Bob
• find and hire a virtual assistant
• read articles on blog marketing
• change font size on blog to slightly bigger
• etc.

This is just a partial list too.  I know many people have ten times or fifty times as many “TODO” items swimming around in their heads in terms of building their Blogs, and then they wonder why it’s difficult for them to do anything.

There’s just no way to attack all of these things at once.  Trying to do so will just overwhelm you.

What we need to do in order to accomplish our goal is to assign a level of “significance” to each item, and get the items with the highest “significance” done first.

For example, let’s compare three items on this list:

1. design a new logo
2. write 3 posts per week
3. comment on other blogs

What is the significance value of these three items?  Would you say that they are of equal significance, or is one more significant than the others?

From my personal experience as a Blogger I would assign the following significance value to these items:

1. design a new logo – 2% significant
2. write 3 posts per week – 60% significant
3. comment on other blogs – 38% significant

Ok, so what do these numbers mean?

Well, what it means is that if I had 10 hours to spend on my Blogging business in a given week, and I wanted to get the most bang for my buck out of the available time, I would focus all of my time on task #2 – writing 3 blog posts before moving onto task number #3 which is commenting on other blogs, before even thinking about designing a new logo.

The reason for that is that designing a new logo really doesn’t make that much of a difference as far as Blogging success.  Sure it’s something you might want to do, but it’s important to understand it’s significance in the overall scheme of things.

Time and time again I see people trying to get started with Blogging and they waste their time on insignificant things.  They haven’t even written 10 blog posts yet and they’re wasting their time trying to figure out how to integrate with Twitter.  They are getting 2 visitors per day and they’re worrying about the font size on their blog design.

The reason for this is that if you haven’t consciously thought about the significance of any given task in relation to other tasks as it relates to achieving your desired goal, by default your mind will assign equal significance to each task!

Meaning, by default your mind will think this is the significance of each of these tasks:

• design a new logo – 33% significant
• write 3 posts per week – 33% significant
• comment on other blogs – 33% significant

Do you see what I mean?

In such a scenario, what we naturally do is we focus on that which is easiest.  Perhaps if you are a designer or know someone who is, you’ll waste your time focusing on creating a spiffy new logo for your website instead of writing some actual content.

What’s worse is that in this example I’m just showing three items, but in a typical “TODO” list, we may have 25-100 different items for each goal.  If you don’t specifically understand how significant/important each item is on your list, your mind will just assume they are all of equal value and you’ll just end up doing what’s easiest!

Doing what’s easiest is not going to accomplish your goal.  Doing what matters is.  For that, you need to understand the significance of each item on your TODO list.

Significance Tracking and Losing Weight

Another great personal example from my life recently is learning how to assign significance values to all the things that I need to get done in order to accomplish my goal of losing fat and building muscle.

There is no shortage of items I could put on my “TODO” list related to this goal.  For example, here’s a short list:

• find or buy a food scale
• do my Power 90 workouts daily
• avoid/eliminate MSG in foods
• avoid/eliminate drinking pop or sugary drinks
• drink 6-10 glasses of water daily
• take my multi-vitamins
• take my Omega 3 supplements
• make my own salad dressings
• research salad dressing recipes
• track my daily calories
• take pictures of my body daily
• weigh myself every morning
• get plenty of sleep
• eat plenty of vegetables
• cycle my carbs
• etc.

The actual list is probably closer to at least 150-200.  As in the previous example, the challenge is that if I was to just try to implement everything on this list I would probably freak out and get totally overwhelmed.

The trick is to learn what is the significance of each item.

For example, let’s say that I have one hour to spend on my body transformation.  Which of these tasks do you think will be more significant to achieving my goal of losing fat and building muscle:

1. do my Power 90 workout for today
2. research salad dressing recipes

I’m sure you’d agree that getting my workout done is probably WAY more significant than researching salad dressing recipes.  If for example I could either get my workout done and end up using a store-bought salad dressing which has 15 carb calories more than making my own salad dressing, OR skip my workout and research and make my own salad dressing which has 15 less carb calories, I would rather do my workout.

In comparison to doing my Power 90 workout, the dressing I use on my salad is almost insignificant.

I’m not saying that making your own salad dressing instead of using a store bought one isn’t a good idea.  What I’m saying is that it is not significant enough to waste my time worrying about it if I haven’t even gotten my workout done!

Always do the most significant things first.  Not the insignificant things that you’re only doing because they are easier to do than the significant things.

Here’s a question for you guys…

Question: Let’s say you’re 40lbs overweight like I am right now.  Which do you think is better – steaming your vegetables or eating them raw?

Answer: Who cares, get your Power 90 workout done first.

Getting Lost in Minutiae

One of the biggest differences I see between successful scanners / polymaths and specialists is that successful scanners are great at identifying the significant factors in accomplishing a goal in any area of life.  Specialists tend to get lost in the minutiae of every little tiny spec-of-dust detail of things and they overwhelm themselves and give up.

The trick in doing less and accomplishing more is learning to be a good “Significance Evaluator”.

For example, if you’re watching a webinar on Blogging or link building and the presenter is showing you 32 strategies for growing your Blog, you must evaluate the significance of each of the 32 strategies as they relate to each other and also as they relate to what you’re already doing.  Trying to implement all 32 of them into your current plan probably won’t work, unless you have unlimited amounts of time and energy at your disposal.

Every CEO who has ever run a successful business knows that there is always more stuff to get done than a company could ever get done.  There is no such thing as running out of things to do for a CEO.  Successful CEO’s are great at looking at 500 items that ALL seem like super important tasks that need to be done, and being able to evaluate the significance of each task quickly so that they can correctly figure out what to do at any given time.

Significance and Intuition

One thing that I rely on heavily in my life is using my intuition to determine the significance of items on my “TODO” list.  Learning to listen to your intuition is beyond the scope of this article, but I do know that understanding the “why” behind each “TODO” item on your list is important.

Going back to my Blogging example, if someone told you that leaving comments on other Blogs is a good thing to do, find out why.  If you don’t know why you’re doing something, it’s hard for your intuition to signal you if it’s important.

How to Implement

Ok, so how do we implement this concept in our lives?

Get out a piece of paper and write down your #1 goal in each category of your life.  For example, what is your #1 goal health/fitness wise?  What is your #1 goal financially?  What is your #1 goal relationship wise?  What is your #1 goal career wise? etc.

Then, underneath each goal, write down only 3 of the most significant/important things that would produce the biggest amount of progress towards achieving that goal in your life.

If you don’t know what the top 3 things are, find out!

For example, lets say that your top 3 things for building a successful Blog are:

1. Write 3 posts per week.
2. Build 3 links to Blog per week.
3. Leave 10 comments on other Blogs/Forums per week.

What you would do is essentially FORGET about any of the other crap on your list until you’re doing those three things.  Forget about your blog design, your logo, your header, your eBook, your analytics, your categories, your twitter button, your facebook button, and your font size.  If you’re not doing the 3 most significant/important things, then none of the other things matter.

There is always going to be another expert in your life trying to distract you with some kind of new “magic formula” or some “magic bullet” solution to your problems.  We are all in information overload.  Don’t let that stop you from achieving your goals.  Figure out the most important / significant things that you MUST do in order to bring you closer to your goal and then get those things done first.  Only then, start looking at the next set of most significant things to get done.

If you try to do everything at once, you’ll overwhelm yourself, overheat your brain and quit/give up.

In my martial arts training, one of the first things we learned how to do was to learn how to fall to the ground without hurting ourselves.  We didn’t learn how to do a spinning helicopter kick or spend four hours learning to perfectly tie our belts.  We learned the thing that was the most significant to a brand new student.  How to fall safely.

So what’s on your list?