Get Everything Done

Since I think DIT is the most effective system for me, I've been making more of a focused effort to iron out my personal bugs with it. For you other DIT users out there - I'm especially interested in how you would handle this, Seraphim - what do you do when you get stuck on a task for whatever reason? Maybe it's a lot more difficult than you expected or more overwhelming than you expected. How do you handle it while keeping up your momentum of going down the list?

I've just been using it for a short time now, but I don't get stuck because unless there's a firm deadline for today, I just require that I do *something* on the task today. What works about this is that I have the tension of knowing that if I don't finish it, it will be back on tomorrow's list.

I re-negotiate. If the task is much bigger (or more difficult etc) than I expected I'll have to deal with myself here: is it too much? Should I get rid of the commitment? Is it too much for one day and I should make it a project?

Both of these instances are described in the book and are therefore standard DIT behaviour.

This re-negotiating is then of course the first step of dealing with the task, so no loss of momentum at all.

Does this help?

If I get stuck on a task, I break it down. writing all subtasks needed, or sometimes only the first steps. The more stuck I am, the deeper I go in the braking down, going down sometimes to very elementary subtasks, such as "open such and such files".

It has several benefits :
1- I have started to work on the task, so it is encouraging (the "open the file" effect described by Mark)
2- all individual small steps are less impressive than one big task, so my resistance level goes down
3- It helps me identify what really was blocking me. For example, I lack input datas I must ask before doing the task, or my final goal for this task is not really clear.
4- the breaking down starts a background unconscious thinking about the tasks, and sometimes a new idea to make it easier comes by itself a few hours or days after.

I break the task down as AlexB describes, all the way down to the elemntary "Get the files out" kind of steps that I could reasonably finish in a matter of seconds. I don't write any of these down, I just sit and think on it until I identify the next three "Matter Of Seconds Tasks" (I call them "the three MOST basic"). I then use "Mental SMEMA" on those three. This means I work the first two (eg: Open File A, then Open File B), then before doing the third, I think of 2 more MOST basic tasks and add them to the mental running list. And so on, mentally keeping track of "Doing two MOST basic Tasks, Brainstorming next two MOST basic Tasks" and repeat)

This mental exercise has the effect of obliterating my resistance, and gaining me some early momentum on the task. I rarely get through 2 or 3 cycles of Mental SMEMA before I completely drop the exercise and just run with the task.

Benefits are similar to AlexB's list above, but adding SMEMA as a mental exercise has the effect of the "Getting the file out" procrastination hack on speed.