The hardest part about getting things done isn’t necessarily trying to shift through countless productivity books, attending numerous GTD seminars until you ‘get it’ or implementing a fancy, hi-tech setup to manage your super-crazy life. It’s not even trying to regularly do a weekly review or capturing all the loose ends in your head. It’s often just finding the motivation to take action…
Working through your to-do list is just like anything else. If there is little (or no) motivation there, you’re going to resist doing it. Thus, when faced with a to-do list of pure crap, it’s like trying to bash your way through a brick wall. But, surely there is a way around this? The answer is to build up momentum. Once you start cranking out a few widgets, completing some tasks on your to-do list or responding to several emails in your inbox, you’ll get some momentum behind you and before you know it, you’ll be on a roll.
Ok, you might temporarily have to put your energies into work that isn’t necessarily important, but if you don’t do anything at all, you won’t have the momentum required to do the work that is important.
When you are struggling to start work, doing something or anything to get a bit of momentum built up is often the way to go. Trimming and prioritizing your work will only get you so far if the stuff you’re doing is stuff you don’t actually want to be doing. People often say shifting your focus like this is just procrastinating and avoiding the real work you need to do, but if it gives you the momentum you need to face these tasks, what’s the problem?
Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all. For full information please view its dedicated page.
April 1, 2009 at 06:09PM
I agree with you completely that doing something is better than nothing. I think David Seah once wrote about how we sometimes feel overwhelmed by the things we have to do and don’t start.
Maybe we can’t do the whole thing, but maybe we can devote 15 minutes to it. A lot of his pCEO forms have that 15 minute bubble, so you can do a tiny fraction of a task and still get a reward from filling it in.
Come to think of it, I need a simple way to capture fractions of a task. Any other recommendations?
April 4, 2009 at 08:24AM
I think in terms of next actions (GTD term). All my items on my to-do list are just the next physical steps to move a project forward. They are basically bitesize tasks. Maybe that is similar to your idea of fractions of a task?
April 9, 2009 at 08:40AM
I think it’s important to be do something trivial and easy during those times when it’s hard to concentrate on the bigger stuff. At least you’re probably doing things you would otherwise need to do at some point anyways.
April 18, 2009 at 06:56PM
Hi, thanks for the link to my blog article on the powers of procrastination; it’s nice to know that you found it worthy enough of linking to.