Refocused Living

What if you have a lot of things you can possibly do, but you aren’t totally sure of what you truly want to be doing?

For example, say that you’re a blogger. You can easily think of 10 different topics you’d like to write about, but you can’t really pinpoint the exact topic that you want to create into a post. What do you do?

Honestly? Just pick something!

Pick something. Pick anything. Stop debating. Just do it!

Don’t stand in front of the fridge debating what to eat for dinner. Just pick the best healthiest thing that sounds amazing to you, and chow down! Don’t stare at a stack of books mulling over what you want to read; just pick a book from the pile and read that first page. Can’t decide on what exercises to do? Well… maybe you can procrastinate on that for a day, like everyone else.

I’ve found out that little indecisions get in the way of life. They clog up my own mental RAM. For example, it’s no secret that I love writing for my blog. If I’m too busy debating what topic I want to write about, I’m not actually getting any work done. Ideas by themselves don’t provide value to my readers. But picking an idea, writing it up into an insightful blog post, and sharing it with people online gets the value out there. A little indecision like “what topic should I write about today?” can waste my time and put me in a worse position for tomorrow.

Likewise, procrastinating on eating makes me cranky. You don’t wanna deal with me when I’m cranky.

I’ve also noticed that even when I give myself a time limit to decide on what to do, I’m worse off than what I was. Thinking about my decisions for 10 minutes vs. 5 minutes vs. even 1 minute doesn’t lead to any better decisions than if I were simply to pick something right at that immediate second. It’s almost like I intuitively “know” what I should be doing.

Little decisions that are consciously put off for no good reason also invariably leads to procrastination. In this case, it’s not so much that procrastination is caused by analysis paralysis, but that it’s caused by one thing you should have done not being done at all. Because on action was taken, your motivation decreases. When motivation decreases, it’s harder to get it back up to previous levels.

So, what should you be doing right now? Right, you wanna read another blog post by me.

Some productivity gurus suggest you break down tasks into very small chunks. Turn an hour worth of work into 30 minutes. Clean out one messy desk drawer instead of trying to clean your entire office. The idea here is pretty simple – take one obnoxiously large project and turn it into something so mind-numbingly manageable that there’s no way you can fail to do what’s required of you.

Unless, of course, you’re me. For some reason, even on projects I “know” I should be completing, I just can’t get myself to move forward. For example, who really wants to clean out a shelf in their closet? Just looking at the mess makes me want to sprint in the other direction faster than a lion chasing dinner on an African plain. First I’d have to actually go to the closet, then start pulling stuff out… then organizing all of said stuff… then putting everything in new places… ugh, it’s one big mess. And it’s boring, too.

Part of the problem that I (and many other people) have is that when we look at an unpleasant task or project, it shifts into this daunting, irritating mess. We all know that when we look at things in a negative light, it causes us to start labeling those things with negative assumptions. So, it doesn’t matter if the task is “clean out the entire closet” or “clean out two shelves in the closet” or “clean half a shelf in the closet,” the task still looks unpleasant.

How did I get around this problem?

The easiest thing I have found that helps me get around this problem is to do one simple task. One, simple, dirt easy task. Complete one task that’s so simple that it’d be foolish and silly for you to say “No, that’s too much work! I can’t do that.”

One simple task, that’s all it takes!

“One task?” you ask, “that’s all I need to do?” Yep. Here are some examples of doing one task on something that you might procrastinate with:

• Instead of checking all 150 emails in your inbox, check just one.
• Have a blog post you want to write, but you can’t figure out where to start? Type just one sentence – no more, no less.
• Want to start a new book but don’t have time for it? Read the first line of the first chapter, then put the book down.

I like to refer to these simple tasks as “mini-actions” – they’re things that are so obnoxiously simple, they’re like miniature action steps. It’s not quite doing an entire action step, but doing a very small sliver of one.

Write one bar of music. Put one book back on the bookshelf. Place one dish from the dishwasher back where it belongs. Simple simple simple.

Doing one mini-action step overcomes any inertia that might have built up from procrastination or analysis paralysis. Can’t figure out where to start? Do one simple thing that couldn’t possibly be any simpler. Your project looks too large that it scares you? Figure out the easiest task to do that’ll take the least amount of time and complete it.

The great thing about this method is that once you do one thing, you’ll feel compelled to do some more. Since one little task is already done, why not try another? And then another? You break the pattern that was holding you back all along.

What’s going to be your next simple task you’ll complete? Ah, that’s right. You’re going to read the first sentence of another one of my blog posts.