When You Think of a Task, Do It
When you think of a task, do it as it occurs to you.
Here’s the logic behind this thought. There are going to be more things that you are going to need to do per day by a factor of a number with more zeroes than I know how to pronounce, and I can last until about a kajillion. (Or was that bazillion?) Anyway, lots. And lots. And a lot of them are just bits of things that you need to do to keep momentum towards making your wild idea come to life.
Your piles of ‘to do’ stuff are just going to keep getting higher, and you’re going to reach a moment when you’re not going to remember everything that is swirling. Even if you’re a compulsive note taker and list maker.
So, if you look at something and think, “I’ll get back to this later,” one of two things are going to happen. You’re going to forget it, and have to scramble to catch up. Or you’re going to come back to it later and then expend twice the energy on it because you’ve now had to touch it twice. It’s now taken twice the brain cells than it should have, twice the lift. You could have spent that time/energy on something else. Maybe the next step to getting towards your wild idea. Or napping.
Obviously, for bigger tasks, this doesn’t always work. But if it’s small and it’s quick and it’s doable, just get it done. Get it out of your way, don’t think about it too hard, and then you’ve only had to touch it once.
Beyond the Prosaic and Pragmatic
Beyond that, though, there is a bigger question of flow and energy. There’s a kind of empowerment that happens when you can plow through your big list. So much in creating a new venture is enormous and amorphous. YYou’ll spend a lot of your time dancing between hope, despair, certainty, and intimate relationships with your own failings.
It’s a funny thing, that dance, because it can take over and become the only dance we’re doing, instead of the one with actually going after our wild ideas. Clever beasts, doubts and fears…
I discovered this particular dynamic when I was writing my dissertation. Rolling out of bed as the sun was rising, before I was even fully awake, I would climb into the words and into the intellectual argument. Writing would start before my conscious mind had a chance to remind me that I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing and convince me that there was no way I could ever put together thoughts that were worthy of a doctorate. I wrote most of my dissertation in this place.
As I moved into creating Spillian, that same early morning momentum carried me through most days – anything that I can unfold and check off that magic list early in the day, I do it. Especially pedestrian things like emails, other flotsam. I live in a fair amount of clutter much of the time. (I am suspicious of those who live in pristinely neat universes… I’m not sure they’re often actually doing much other than making sure their universe is pristinely neat. This is, of course, another version of the wrong dance taking over.) But the clutter of Gottado’s can keep me weighted down and unable to soar.
A Rare Case for Delayed Gratification
I am also, in many ways, not a good little delayed gratification person. The earnest weight of the oh-so-righteous holding the best until last doesn’t sit particularly well in my psyche. I’m inclined to eat the ice cream, if not first, early enough in the game that I still want it.
But getting the little Gottado’s vanquished in the day allows me to revel in the ideas and work that really feed me and the project. I can savor the ice cream of the ideas AND have a glow of self-righteousness. I think that cancels any calories… When you think of a task, just do it.
The Getting Things Done model of delegating tasks and doing work prescribes immediate action on any inbox item that can be completed in under 3 minutes.
It’s like making the bed. Do you have to? No. Though doing it keeps your from crawling back in already checks off an accomplishment. No matter how trivial, something got done.
GTD is very heavy on maintaining a physical inventory of these ideas on paper, paired with a calendar to add a dimension of time, and it was clunky. The Action Method is list-based, and really just do something on the list and keep plugging or sorting for later. The app was good, then they became Behance, and now it’s an Adobe product, and I haven’t touched it since they started charging an arm and a leg subscription to a mobile list app. They made paperbound notebooks with guidance that I like and still use.
I hope to live to see a day when an app, web platform, or paperback life/work org strategy actually lives up to it’s expectations. My HR friend and their team use Trello. There’s just a learning curve and a habituation of documenting ideas in the app that make it hard to start.
I had to laugh. I kept reading “Gottado’s” and thought you were referencing some Italian mythological character or a tale of the Renaissance. “go-todd-oh’s” 😉
Thanks, Chance!
I’ve used Trello as well, and Basecamp, and a few other cloud based tools to keep on task. It’s an interesting balance, I find – they can be really helpful, and they can also become their own weird way of avoiding work. (The dreaded ‘make the list of things to do to avoid actually doing the things you need to do’ avoidance technique…lol.)
And am amused by your take on the Gottado’s…you’ll meet my version soon! They’re creatures in the story of the Queen of Frivolity… 🙂
I use Teamworkpm.net for our entire company. It’s awesome for coordinating everyone on projects and tasks (and for monitoring the progress of others). For me, I cannot afford to break my stride and do a task when I think of it… I’d rather complete what I am doing before moving on to something else. Also, many of the tasks I think of come to me right before bed and I don’t want to delay my sleep. However, when I record them in my cloud-based project software (which I can do through the push-button app on my phone) then I make notes that help me understand what the task is. Another important thing: Title the Task with the ACTION and not just what it’s about. IE: “Call vendor about stalling price increase” – instead of “Price Increase” or “Call Vendor”. And break out tasks to individual actions. IE: Task 1 Shop for new vendors for X Task 2 Call current vendor of X and let them know I am shopping to get price decrease. Don’t make those all one task. It’s too easy to mix up all the steps and details.
So lest my response take flight, I put the task on my ‘Dodo” list — a cross between the extinct flightless bird and a pile of something to avoid. Rather than using a new special notebook or a new app,, I create a small notebook by folding one sided letters in half and recycling them for extra list use before they go to the permanent paper recycling bin. On arising each day I create the “Dodo” list for that day on the top sheet of paper by reviewing all those items left from the day before (in this case “Wedensday’s List) and merging the tasks with new perhaps more urgent items that have appeared in the morning email or yesterday’s mail or popped up in a dream. I triage the tasks starting with ‘the easiest’ and least daunting, to get the energy moving and the task ball rolling. The most challenging tasks almost always involve technology (e.g. hook up the new laptop to the wireless printer etc) and these tend to be passed down the list for a day when I’m feeling especially resilient. I usually get about 50% of the list done in a few hours (emails first; calls when people might actually be in their office). Yesterday I did not get the answer from CCCD about Stream Erosion Prevention Programs for my cousin who’s driveway is slipping into the Upper Esopus, but today I got through and got a list of several ‘spot on” sounding NGO’s that help with this so I’m now researching those and getting additional resources that sound very promising for solving the problem but NOT for shortening my “Dodo” list for Thursday……which alas,like the child, now has even further to go! But I DID make the comment about taking action and can now cross that off the list! Ever onward!!!