Crafting my WoW "Do Not Do" List

I like almost everything about WoW. I don't do everything, but I like everything. And now that there are achievements, I can get credit for doing everything, which I already like doing, but that makes it better.

So it can be hard to step away from WoW, because it always seems like there is so much to do. But I think stepping back from your "Main Game" is a good idea from time to time, even when you are firmly entrenched.

For example, I occasionally try "To Do" lists of all the things I want to do in WoW, but they fast become too cumbersome. I set down first five, then ten, then fifteen goals, and then two thoughts pop into my head. First, that I can never achieve all fifteen goals. Second, that the fifteen goals are but a tiny fraction of what I'd like to do in the game. And since I like to do everything in the game, many of those fifteen items are enormous time-dumps that do relatively little for my character.

I've already sworn off one of these, because how can you have time to run Molten Core twenty times but no time to play Mass Effect 2 once? A more thorough swearing-off, though, is warranted. So I've decided to make a "Do Not Do" list. A list of tasks in WoW that I'd like to do, but that are so time-inefficient that I'm prohibiting myself from so indulging.

There are only two rules of the "Do Not Do" list. When I play with my wife anything is fair game, since we are hanging out and I'm up for whatever she wants to do. The other is that items on the "Do Not Do" list must be tasks I had planned or hoped to perform at some point. Saying I'll never level a druid does not save me any time since I'd long ago sworn off the cursed shapeshifters**.

1. No Solo or Duo Molten Core, because each run ends up taking me four or more hours, and I'd need 20 more runs to get everything I need, and I could play two or three (or five or ten) good single player games in that time, and I'm always behind on good single player games.
   
   
2. No mounts that cost more than 5k gold unless there is something truly exceptional about them.
   
   
3. No recipes that take more than ten hours to farm, unless they can make me money. No reputations that take more than twenty hours to grind, unless they are useful or can make me money.
   
   
4. Engineering and Enchanting are my main character's professions. No more changing for any reason.
   
   
5. No new main characters. I am Boat the Warlock, for better or worse.
   
   
6. Only work on achievements on the main.
   
   
7. No more than two new characters leveled from scratch per expansion. I haven't approached this limit in recent history, but the limit itself relieves some stress.
   
   
8. No fishing tournaments. Odds of winning are too low, while the likelihood of wasting time is guaranteed.
   
   
9. I'll never try to hit exalted with any of the worst four or five reputations -- all reps from vanilla WoW, which was an expansion or two before Blizzard figured out how to do reputation.

I notice this is also a thinly-veiled list of my own bad habits in WoW.

** Please don't take this to mean I hold something against cursed shapeshifters in general. I'm quite fond of the Worgen, for example.