While working on my list early yesterday, I came to a task “Buy notebook”. I passed by it saying to myself:
“I haven’t got the car out yet, so I’ll do it later.”
By the time I got to the end of the list I had passed by several other errands for the exactly the same reason. Then on the next pass round the list when I came to the same task again, I still hadn’t got the car out. So I passed the task by again. (Perhaps I should explain that my car is garaged a short walk away from my house).
I suddenly realised that most of these tasks had been hanging around for several days simply because I had only finally got the car out when it was time for evening meetings - by which time it was too late to do any of the tasks.
Looking through my list I could see that many other tasks had similar pre-conditions which weren’t getting addressed.
Anyway, I put “Get car out” on today’s list, and the result is that a whole stream of tasks got done which had been hanging around. I also spent a bit of time identifying other pre-conditions which were holding things up and made sure they were dealt with too.
If you’ve got some tasks which are “sticking”, have a look at what you’re saying to yourself when you pass by them. “I’ll do it later because…”
Then tackle the “because”!