A lot of us are busy people. As a result we’ve implemented all manner of different systems to help us stay organized. No matter the system though, we’ve all experienced the vegetables of our to-do lists. It’s like when you were a child and you were supposed to eat your vegetables, but instead of eating them you just pushed them around on the plate hoping they would go away.

I’ve noticed a pattern with the task versions of our vegetables. We push them around in our list management tools but we can’t get into actually taking care of them. In my experience the problem is always the same. We’ve set ourselves up for failure. The explanation is very “GTDish” but if you think about it in an unbiased fashion it makes sense. The problem is simply that you haven’t broken your work down into doable actions. I’ll give you an example.

I’ve been writing a script for a comic book story I’ve had kicking around in my head. For weeks and weeks I’ve had the task “Complete first draft” on my to-do list. It’s not often I have enough time to sit down and bang out a 22 page rough draft. As a result the task stays on my to-do list because when I reviewed my items I never have enough time to tackle this monstrosity of a task.

How I solved the problem may sound a bit like overkill but it worked. The script was targeted to be about 22 pages long. So I broke the “final draft” task into 22 separate items. “Write Page 1, Write Page 2, Write Page 3″ etc became all of my tasks for the first draft project. While an entire draft is a bear, writing a page in a sitting is easily achieved. Before I even realize it the script was done. It doesn’t have to be single page chunks, but chunks that you can manage to do in a single session. For you it might be “write pages 5 – 20″.

When we’re breaking down a task we don’t go far enough. Some items become dwindled down to a level that seems silly, but depending on personal style we may need our items at the baby food level. The level of detail that gets it off your plate is called “widget” mode. Widget mode is when you can sit down and crank through your to do list with minimal brain power or effort involved. The tasks are at a digestible size and don’t seem as daunting. Again a lot of this depends on personal style.

So if you see that item just sitting on your list, try slicing it up into more steps and see if that helps. It’s like mamma always said “Those vegetables aren’t going to take care of themselves, better find a way to eat them”.

Technorati Tags:
tips, gtd, task management, Getting Things Done

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under GTD, Highlights, Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.