In his Book “High Energy Habits” author Bill Ford talks 
about “Getting rid of the little things that annoy you”. 

We can think of the little things that annoy you as being 
like mosquitoes. They are pesky, irritating and drain you of 
energy you could use far more productively on other things. 

Often these ‘mosquitoes’ are some minor annoyance or 
irritant that that you are tolerating, but are not happy about. 

Usually you know what to do to fix it, but you have just not 
yet got around to doing it. 

We are so busy that these little things do not seem to justify a 
high priority. 

But it takes energy to ignore the mosquitoes and it also reduces 
our enjoyment of whatever else we are doing at the same time. 

The wasted five star hotel room: 

Imagine you have just paid a large amount of money to stay 
in a luxury five star hotel room. The room is magnificent and 
has every luxury you could possible want. 

You lie down to sleep in the superbly comfortable bed and 
suddenly you hear a mosquito start to buzz. 

You turn on the light and because the hotel ceiling is so high 
you can’t get the mosquito. It buzzes in your ear all night and 
you just can’t sleep. 

The five star hotel room has been wasted and all because of 
one tiny mosquito. 

This experience is exactly what life is like when it is full of 
these little annoyances. 

Here’s the solution Bill gives: 

1: Take 10 minutes and make a list of all the little things in 
your life that annoy you. You can even make two lists if you 
want to. One list can be for work and one list can be for your 
personal life. Add to each list over time. You will start to 
notice more and more things that are not quite the way you 

would like them to be. 

2: Pick two easy ‘mosquitoes’ and deal with them today. By 
‘easy’ I mean items where you know all you need to know in 
order to fix them and also won’t take too long. 

These could be things like clean your car, sew on a button, 
replace a light bulb and so on. 

Then keep going and pick at least two more ‘mosquitoes’ for 
another day. The momentum will build. Even if you don’t get 
the thing that irritates you fixed make sure you at least write 
it down. 

Action Exercise: 

Make a list of at least 10-20 little things in your life that irritate 
you in some way. Then take action on two of these things today 
and notice how good you feel. 

At Resilient Minds we help our clients to develop high resilience
so they can perform at high levels on the really important
things in both their work and personal lives. 

Have a great week. 

Jamie Ford
Kim Tay
Thought Leaders in Productivity and Wellbeing
www.resilientminds.co.nz  

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