The project facing you is huge. Complicated. Overwhelmingly immense. How do you respond? Terror? Anger? Procrastination? A Zen laugh?
Photo: Yogi
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re looking at the mountain in front of you. But exactly how you look at the tangle of tasks can make the difference between responding (i.e. acting) and merely reacting.
How do you think about tasks and time?
Consider the difference between:
- There are many things that I need to have done
- There are many things that I need to do right now
#1 leaves you with no chance of feeling good about yourself. You’re already behind! Depending on your personality, this may or may not demoralize and paralyze you.
#2 leaves you open to a persistent case of information overload. With so many things to do right now, you’ve unwittingly given yourself yet another thing to do: figure out which of these zillion things you should really do right now! I know I don’t function well under this kind of pressure. You might be able to, but I’d still like to recommend another approach.
Spend a little time to decide, “what do I have to do first?”
Notice I didn’t say, decide what to do first, second, and third. This is not a plan-a-thon; it’s a survival strategy. You could think of it task triage. The first benefit is that you remove the additional pressure–the information overload pressure–of not knowing which of the many tasks facing you to address first. That’s pretty nice, already. But there’s another benefit that may trump any other you could think of.
With only one thing in front of you to do next, you will be able to start.
You have many choices in how you define that first task. Don’t make it too big. “Just sit down and write the novel” is too big. “Sit down and write the first chapter of the novel” is also too big.
Watch yourself: “Buy a ream of paper” might be too small, or, rather, it may just be you procrastinating. Or…it may in fact be the first thing you need to do before you can make any other forward progress on your novel. You’ve got to be honest with yourself here.
Once you have decided what it is you have to do first, and then after you have accomplished that task, the next step is clear: you decide (again), “what do I have to do first?”
Interesting… I often find myself in get-started-paralysis at the onset of a large project, or at a pause in the middle, where there is much to do but the proper next step is not apparent. I can easily obsess over planning the perfect sequence of tasks, ever debating where to start and how to proceed. When caught in this eddy it’s difficult to get anything meaningful accomplished.
Over time I have adopted a motto that more often than not works perfectly. “Do *something*.” Just keep doing something. Start somewhere nearby and keep going to the next breaking point or until a sensible sequence presents itself (which it nearly always does).
It’s become a mantra for those perplexed moments, and I am getting better at recognizing when I need to use it.
This was a valuable reminder. I am in the middle of a complicated creative project where I have to convince a team of people to work in concert and reach consensus, all on top of their normal work, when they are all pulling in odd directions. I have had traitorous thoughts of it being easier to do all myself…but of course 1) it isn’t and 2) diversity is strength.
After days of panic I am now asking myself, “What do I need to do this afternoon?” Hmm, that same thing I procrastinated on this morning. I should feel calmer in about an hour, when the next step is behind me.