When you are trying to cut down your workload, the place to look is not at your individual tasks, but at your commitments. When we feel the need to cut our workload, there is a marked tendency to do it by cutting the time we allocate to each commitment, rather than by cutting the commitments themselves. It is much more sensible to cut our commitments so we have adequate time to complete them all. Commitments are like bushes – they need regular pruning.