Last week I felt overwhelmed by the amount of tasks that I could be doing. But as the saying goes, I have only one pair of hands and I can only focus on one thing at a time.
The problem with that is your subconscious mind is constantly analysing the opportunity cost of spending time on a task.
Let’s take an example: Should I
a) Write a new article for my site
b) Participate in a forum thread
c) Spend an hour on article marketing
Now, I have no way of telling which activity will benefit my business more. I’m pretty sure all 3 are worth doing but which one is worth doing the most? It’s impossible to say.
in addition, there will be no feedback once I’ve completed the task as to how useful (or not) it was. Our (western educated) brains are conditioned to expect some feedback from every endeavour we engage in and if there is no feedback then we regard it as a waste of time.
The trouble is, may brain is trying desperately to work out which activity is more valuable. And since there is no answer, it leads to a state of anxiety accumulating in paralysis and avoidance of doing ANY of the tasks. Ouch! That’s not going to get me anywhere.
So what do I do?
I’ve decided to create a simple task list for next month that details exactly what I should do on any given day. You can download my schedule for this month here
It’s pretty simple but it is my guide out of the paralysis of choice. If I engage a little faith in the fact that it’s going to work long term then I can allow my brain to stop attempting to analyse the opportunity costs of each task and I can, without too much thought, execute the required tasks.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
hey Keith, nice post. The schedule idea is a good one, it’s a lot easier when you can get up and just start working on the stuff you’ve written down.
It’s way too easy to think of 100 things you need to do, then end up doing nothing.
Sean
Hey Keith, I really like your schedule.
It’s so simple and it defines exactly what you need to do to keep productive. It seems to me like it works a great deal better than a plain old ‘todo’ list, as it defines a timeline for achieving things as well.
I’ll definitely have to write one up for myself.