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Note Rule: It shouldn’t take longer to “put it on the list” than it would to actually just do it.

So I caught myself doing something this morning that might give a little insight about my concerns of not being able to make progress on my to-do lists. In preparing to mail out my car payment, I noticed that we were out of mailing address labels … looking back, we’ve actually been out for a couple of months, but I’ve kept putting off printing out a new sheet until today. And it finally dawned on me as I was pulling up my latest to-do list on the computer to add this latest task that not for nothing, but in the same amount of time that it would take me to pull up the spreadsheet and add it to the list, I could just as easily be pulling up the label template and printing off another sheet of labels instead!

Even with also having to replace an ink cartridge and print a test sheet, the whole process took me maybe five minutes, so instead of adding it to the list and hand-writing today’s envelope, now that’s one less minute task to burden down my list. Taking it a step further with this new realization, I also noticed a couple of other seemingly silly items on my list, so about ten minutes later those were both done as well, and thus I managed to knock out three tasks that I’ve been putting off forever in less than 15 minutes.

Now it seems trivial and I know that it wouldn’t apply in every situation because sometimes I either come up with ideas for other projects while I’m already in the middle of working on something else or even a task for home comes to mind when I’m out driving around that I simply can’t address right away, but in general I think this will prove to be something worthwhile to keep in mind because I know that my lists can tend to get bogged down with mindless, 5-minute tasks like these and if I can avoid allowing them to muck up the process and hold me back from focusing on more substantial efforts, then I think it would be a few minutes here or there well spent.

In giving my list a second pass after completing these items, I think I’m a little better off than I was before, with each remaining item now being upwards of 30 minutes or in some cases much longer, and I think that’s the kind of stuff that I need to be reminded of anyways. Ultimately, I think it’s still ok for short tasks to appear occasionally, but there needs to be a little more substance to the reason for not addressing them right away … you know, something more than “I don’t feel like it…” or other such laziness, anyways! 🙂

I find myself at the beginning of a cycle with regards to managing my creative efforts.

It seems to happen a lot:

• I “fall off the wagon” and get behind with my regular writing efforts.
• I then, after taking one or two steps back in the right direction, I start focusing more on organization to list out all of what I need to do to truly get back in line.
• Overwhelmed by the list, I then proceed to get lost in the minutae as my list grows larger and larger.

It’s a tricky scenario to overcome because on one hand, it’s important to list out what needs to be done not only to serve as a checklist for making process, but also to ensure that I don’t end up forgetting something along the way. I think part of the downside, though, is that this also ends up quantifying just how much work needs to be done, which while it can be interesting to know, I think can also be detrimental because it also seems to psyche me out in knowing the daunting volume of work that lies ahead.

Also, part of it could be that I simply get too granular when I’m putting said list(s) together, which could again be for detail’s sake out of fear of overlooking something, but I think there’s also a bit of motivation to be found there because I do feel good about being able to cross off each item as I complete them, even if sometimes they’re a tad mundane.

So the question is, how should I proceed at this point to see the most productive results? The formation of the makeup list is right around the corner, which I still say doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, however maybe it’s the manner in which I interact with the list that’s the key. I already know from past experience that sometimes it’s best to just pick one thing and focus on that, so maybe I use the list to simply identify my next task, then put it away until I’m ready to cross that one off and choose another. That might actually end up helping two-fold because in addition to allowing me to focus on one thing, in theory it would also ease some of the pressure of the impending work to come.

Of course, I suppose the ultimate solution is don’t fall off track in the first place, but we’ll just have to work on that for next time… 🙂