The last weeks of August are bittersweet for me as I say farewell to summer, my favourite season. I experience September as a month of new beginnings, likely harking back to my school years – but without the new erasers and pencil crayons. In this month’s newsletter I share some insights about to-do lists prompted by an impromptu closet makeover. I hope you enjoy the results of cleaning out your to-list and getting it ready for the ‘new year’ as much as I enjoyed cleaning out my closet.
When I contemplated swapping over the hangers my mind rebelled because this simple act actually represented a series of tasks that I either hadn’t thought about or didn’t want to deal with. Inevitably I would encounter a piece of clothing that didn’t fit, was no longer fashionable (or might never have been) or something I never liked in the first place which would involve a series of decisions. Throw it out? Save it because I just might want to wear it someday? Give it to a charity? Should I send it to a consignment store? Perhaps I should look into donating things to Dress for Success but how do you do that? And what should I do with all the old, but perfectly good wooden hangers that would be left? Too many decisions and too many questions when all I wanted was skinnier hangers in order to make more room in my closet.
Procrastination haunts even the most productive among us. We’ve all found ourselves avoiding or dodging tasks. Too often we chastise ourselves and think how much better off we’d be if only we weren’t procrastinators. In his book, The Now Habit, Neil Fiore suggests that we procrastinate to cope with the anxiety of starting or completing a task or to deal with tasks that are overwhelming. I’d like to add a couple of additional ideas that might help you understand procrastination based on my enlightening experience with the skinny hangers.
How many tasks on your to-do list are like my hangers and are really projects in disguise? We are often far too ambitious when we create our to-do lists, adding tasks such as “Revise business plan” and then wonder why we never get it done. Productivity-guru David Allen calls this a project because it takes more than 1 action to complete. Our brains quite rightly rebel when they encounter projects on to-do lists knowing that they require multiple actions, none of which has been articulated when we list “Revise business plan”. So in others words, the to-do list is not telling us what to do – it’s just causing confusion.
A lack of clarity about the successful outcome can often get us stuck. Just as athletes use images of themselves winning races to improve their performance, imagining what we want to achieve as a result of completing a project or task can help us get into action by making sure it’s the right action. If you can’t see yourself doing it, you likely can’t see what you should be doing.
Take a look at your to-do list. Just as I went through all the items in my closet take a look at the actions on your list – are they ‘doable’? Do they mean anything to you? Are you clear about what it would look like if you had completed the task? Have you captured all the actions that need to happen? Do you need to break them down into more manageable chunks or perhaps it’s no longer a task worth doing.
IDEAS YOU CAN USE
Getting clear about what you need to do can help you avoid being caught in the clutches of procrastination. Digging even deeper into the reasons you might be stuck will have you well on your way to accomplishing all you set out to do.
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