Sometimes the most powerful ideas are staring one in the face. That’s exactly how I felt when I thought of this method.
Please note that I have not tested out this in any way shape or form whatsoever. In fact I only thought of it last night, and today is my first day using it. However it’s already shown itself to be very powerful, so I’m going to describe it so anyone who wants to can experiment with it.
One of the most persistant ideas I have carried around with me is that the correct way to prioritise what one does is “Do the thing you are most resisting first”. The things that one is resisting tend to take you outside your comfort zone, so they are frequently the very things you need to do in order to take your business and/or your life forward.
However I’ve found it very difficult to find a systematic way of doing this. Of course the simplest way would be to identify what one’s resisting most, bash away at it until it is finished, and then identify the next most resisted project/task and give it the same treatment. But unfortunately this sort of one-thing-at-a-time approach isn’t very realistic in real life. There are lots of things calling for our attention and we can’t just abandon all of them for days on end.
Then, as I said a moment ago, I had a brainwave yesterday evening. I realised that the method I described in my previous post, Another Simple and Effective Method, would be the ideal vehicle for this. All one has to do is to change the criteria for selection of tasks so that instead of chosing the easiest task in each section you choose the task you are most resisting.
Basically that’s it. All you have to do is read the rules in the previous post and use what you are most resisting as your selection criterion.
Please note that with this method you will need to do urgent tasks separately, using the rule “If it needs to be done now, do it now.”