How many things do you need to get done right now? You can probably name up to half a dozen without thinking. But if you take a few minutes, you can probably find another half dozen to a dozen other things that you need to get done right now.
What are you working on right now? Any of those? Or are you goofing off reading blog posts about task paralysis?
So how do you get past the paralysis?
A while back I listened to David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done
]. Our brains get full of all the things we need to do .. from following up a project with a direct to organising a meeting to planning a new venture. Everything is floating there in that soup and everything is fighting to be the current hot task.
So Dave says to get them out of there. Stop them fighting for attention in your brain and put them on a piece of paper.
However, don’t make a todo list. Todo lists look chronological and you’ll spend time fussing over which goes at the top of the page. Just get them out of your head.
I got a pack of 3″ x 5″ index cards and had a printer guillotine them in quarters. Now they’re slightly smaller than a business card.
When ever I have something else come along that needs to get done I write it on a card and throw it into the stack. When ever I feel task paralysis, I realise it’s time to do another big dump onto the cards.
Along the top of my monitor there’s a groove where the front bezel meets the main part of the case. It’s really narrow, so these cards sit in there nicely. This, for me, is a great place to put the cards I’m planning on working on today. I look through the entire bunch of cards and find those that need to be done right now more than the others and put them along the groove.
Now I no longer have a couple of dozen things I need to get done right now, just 4 or 5. And I can handle 4 or 5.
I know what you’re thinking: how on earth do you ever get through all those cards? Surely more come in than ever get out?
Well, yes. That can easily be the case. And this is where the genius of your position as a leader comes in. This is where you get to use the Magic Word: Delegate.
I’ll talk more about delegation later, but for now let me tell you that the only thing you shouldn’t ever delegate is H.R.. Anything else is ripe for offloading. Start the day by delegating some of your cards!
What do you think? How do you deal with your huge pile of top-priority tasks?
