Get Everything Done

I realized today I've been avoiding a dot, it messed EVERYTHING up, and I didn't even notice.

I had this item that was big (more like a Project), and ill-defined (no clear action steps), but I put it on my FV list as-is. That had been working before. I would just get clarity when I came to it.

But I didn't. Working through the current chain it quickly became the next dot, but instead of doing it I got "busy" with other things - a couple other easy ones I could do, a little Internet surfing, roaming through email, working on some latest and loudest that had trickled in. I would sense I had gotten off-track, go look at my list again, see that item and subconsciously think "ugh" and then look away and get busy on something else.

What to do? Redefine? Split into smaller pieces? Pick one teeny tiny thing I can do to unblock it and cross it off? The latter is where I'm seeking help.

I just didn't have the energy to do a big "Project Think" about it. I also don't think the "set a timer and work for 5 minutes" technique would do it. I could feel it was the very idea of initial engagement at any level that I was fighting.

In these situations, once I actually do something - ANYTHING - no matter how tiny, I cross some invisible barrier and then the item turns back into a normal task. But before that, it's a two-headed monster playing a game of "who blinks first", and that keeps growing new heads with every pass where I blink, lose, and look away. It eventually morphs into a Medusa, where I can't even look.

I want to follow the process, and I know there are other dots in the chain, but I'm unwilling to skip a dot. Skip one, and the whole thing falls apart. You might as well do them in any order at that point, and skip the dots altogether.

Any thoughts what to do in a situation like this? I suspect it's a simple and clever hack of the "little and often" principle. Help!

[Cross it out and put it at the end of the list. Thinking about it all counts as taking some action on it. - MF]

If you've tried everything you can think of, I'd undot it and work the rest of the list. That's assuming you can safely leave it for the next chain. It sounds like if you don't leave it, you'll lose even more.

Check this entry:
http://www.markforster.net/blog/2008/7/30/ill-just-get-the-file-out-conquer-procrastination-for-ever.html

If that seems too small, spend five minutes recording your thoughts about the project and put that paper in the file.

How important is the task? Can you move it to Someday/Maybe?

Open Outlook (if you have it) and schedule a meeting with yourself for first thing tomorrow morning when you know you'll be fresh. Write up an agenda as if you were inviting others, and make a short list of pros and cons of the project. If that gets you going then also list the first three steps you would suggest you (and this imaginary team) would take.

Tomorrow during that meeting time reply to yourself and brainstorm any- and everything you can think of, as if those others were in the meeting with you. Type away without judging your own ideas and you'll come up with at least a few things that will get you started. (I like the 'Freewriting' method of writing/typing for 5 minutes without stopping - that's the only rule. It really helps the brain get un-stuck.)

When faced with a similar situation, my own tried and tested technique is the salami, start with a very thin slice of focused time.

Start timer at 5 minutes, work on the dreaded Medusa.
When timer alarm sounds at 00:00, reset at the previous time + another 5 minutes = 10 minutes, continue working
Repeat as necessary,

After the 30 minute alarm has sounded, one has done 5 + 10 + 15 + 20 + 25 + 30 = 105 minutes and meaningful progress has nearly always been made, feelings of self-worth return, maybe tinged with a bit of recrimination for getting into the situation which warranted the salami.

Might not suit everyone, works for me.

Not directly related except I suspect many of us are sufferers, I came across mention of this via the Lifehacker site (which I regard as like a Clint Eastwood fim, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" with some of the stuff on that site).

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect#

I was away from the Discussion Forum for many months last year, maybe someone has already mentioned this before.

Thanks everyone! LOTS of great ideas here. I knew you all would be able to help. :) Plus, I think many struggle with this, but for different reasons. Your variety of simple starting points should address a wide range of Medusas for others.

My favorite for me: My interpretation of Alan's suggestion to change the task to "define the very next action", but then don't do that action. Just write it on the end of the list, and then next round, the resistance will be gone.

BONUS: I'm willing to bet that more often than not, just by taking off the pressure to actually DO something, I will actually do the thinking, define the very next action, and then actually do it right then anyway. The resistance is more in the undefined monster I can't really see (the monster in the dark is always scarier).

Mark asked an interesting question: was the task an old task with resistance that came with it, or was it a new task that grew resistance within FV?

Here's the task: "call Lena re: box labels, truck request, Summit entry, and overs"

The short answer is that the task was added to FV with a whole heap of pre-existing resistance, with the blind hope that FV would somehow magically sort it out for me. FV did NOT create the resistance. It just made it very clear that something was somehow wrong with the task as written.

The long answer, upon reflection, was that 1) this was a new vendor who didn't know our processes, and 2) that I hadn't had to teach a vendor in a long time, and 3) our IT department archives all emails that are older than a year so 4) my well-crafted explanations were gone from my email folders, meaning 5) I would have to recreate them, even though I was not the one most familiar with them because it was my existing vendors who actually did them regularly.

Also, it had four parts listed. The first part involved finding an email listing all the PO numbers I had previously requested and detailing out the contents of each label. The second part involved finding a previous truck request email, then stripping out the vendor-specific information and forwarding it to Lena. The third part involved finding a Powerpoint instruction manual on another department's server for an online process that had been updated since the last manual. The last part involved a conversation about what to do with the extras we had printed, since we were in the middle of a major transition with our warehouse.

Medusa, indeed!

With my current vendors, the task would have read "RW$ shipping paperwork", and there would have been no more than the typical resistance of any other item.

Following Alan's suggestion, I thought about the very next action. It was "Call Lena and let her know she will need to add custom labels to the boxes."

And then, as predicted, the veil lifted, I actually called Lena right then, and took care of the box labels and truck request while she was on the phone. We also cleared up the next steps for the Summit entry and Overs. Those were added to the end of the list, and I finished up the current chain. Medusa was beheaded, and I went home with a smile.

People have suggested 30-minute timers, 5-minute timers, 2-minute timers ... Horrendous aeons ... I keep my wristwatch countdown timer set at 1 minute. I can do absolutely anything for one minute....

When a vague, vast-looking project-sized task looms, I create an action note associated with it, create 5 blank bullet points in it, start the 1-minute timer and write any loosely related thoughts until the bullet points are filled or the timer goes off, whichever is the sooner. Then I pick a next action from the 5 points and it goes at the bottom of the FV list, with the action note attached.

It works for me.

Chris

I should add ... I don't do all my work in one-minute bursts! What I described above is just to break a log-jam.