You have a lot of tasks on your to do list planned for today and you need some strategy how to handle them. Here we go!
Quite common advice is to start the day with the toughest task and since there everything is going downhill. All your next tasks are easier, simpler and more pleasurable to execute.
If above approach works well for you, then it is great. You probably don’t need to read this article farther, just go back to your work. Thank you for your attention.
However, I know a lot of people (including myself), that sometimes get stuck in front of this unfriendly task and simply can’t move forward with their work.
Have you ever experienced such a deadlock? You start feeling bad emotions about this task. You try to switch for a while to a different one, and then you return still being unable to push it forward. You are getting more exposed to different distractions: food, chat, senseless surfing on web, checking inbox and other timewasters. System halt.
Looking for solution I decided to try opposite strategy. I queued my tasks in reverse order, starting with the easiest one and putting the toughest task on the end of the list.
How does it work for me? First tasks are quite simple so it is not difficult to engage into work and finish them. This gives momentum to work on next tasks and as a bonus there is a feeling that at least something has been done.
Quite important point is to keep in mind that one last task. Knowing that there is something difficult and less enjoyable at the end of the list causes that all preceding tasks looks relatively easier. To make this hack works better, think that today you have to do only your last task and then, just distract yourself with other planned tasks in order to avoid executing the last one. I bet you experienced this pattern in past, but you could be unconscious how exactly it worked.
As an example I can tell you how it worked when I was writing my master thesis. Somehow I didn’t like working on it. Almost everyday I planned to push forward my thesis; I always did a lot of other jobs only to move away my main task. As you can suppose, I did a lot of things that normally I wouldn’t do. At first I wasn’t so conscious about this exploit and I did a lot of senseless, timewasting activities. Later I started to use it wisely by putting some other important tasks, before working on my master thesis.
This is less or more how it works for me. I can’t guarantee you would be successful with this method. Try it. Hack your mind by distracting work on toughest task with other, relatively easier tasks. As simple as this.
Ok, but what about the last task?
I don’t say this is perfect hack for solving all your tasks. It has both advantages and disadvantages. Among most important advantages is that it should engage you into work and allow finishing most of your tasks.
The disadvantage is that you finally have to face this last task. If you have enough momentum, finish him like you beat the super boss on the very last level of your favorite platform game. You have already done so much; you don’t want to leave something unfinished.
If above doesn’t work, postpone it. Of course, only if today is not the deadline for this task. But remember that you can’t do this infinitely. Finally, you have to close this task.
If it is really so hard, than you can’t even bite it in any possible way, then….well this is actually a good topic for another post.
