How to Start Any Task

Sometimes the actual work we have to do is less daunting than the idea of just starting it. You know what you want to do and you have habits in place that keep you productive most of the time. But when you sit down to work you just feel stuck. Suddenly, starting feels like the hardest and most daunting thing in the world.

This is a completely normal feeling, but it can be frustrating just staring at your computer screen and feeling the stress of everything you have to do. If this happens to you, you’re not alone. The below tips should give you some guidance on how you can fight through those feelings of overwhelm and procrastination.

How to Start

• Consult your to-do list

  • While many productivity coaches state that to-do lists are pointless, I couldn’t disagree more. A to-do list is a brain dump. We are not meant to carry a list of tasks in our brains. The second you think of something you should do, put it on a to-do list whether that’s in a notebook, an app, or the notes section of your phone. Then when you have a spare moment you can organize that list a bit better by adding tasks to your calendar or restructuring in terms of priority.

  • Look at your to-do list to get an idea of what needs your attention. While the sheer volume of things to accomplish might initially feel overwhelming, they’ll feel less daunting with the next steps…

• Determine your 3 priorities

  • We are constantly getting pulled in different directions throughout the day. You have personal tasks you need to fulfill, your boss sends you an urgent matter, your kids are yelling for your attention. So in order to keep your focus, determine three priorities that you need to accomplish that day. Pick out the three things that if you did them, you would feel like you had a productive day. Maybe three is too small of a number. Maybe you need three personal and three professional priorities. Whatever works for you. Just make sure they’re really priorities and not things that are just seemingly “urgent.”

• Eat The Frog / Hardest Task First

  • Eating the frog is another way of saying do the hardest task first. If you can get your most frustrating, anxiety-inducing task out of the way, you will reduce your mental load and find the subsequent tasks easier.

• Easiest Task First

  • On the flip side of eating the frog, sometimes doing the easiest task first gives you a sense of accomplishment. You don’t know where to begin so you knock out the easiest task, and suddenly “doing” doesn’t seem so intimidating.

• “Just Ten Minutes”

  • Tell yourself you are only going to do a task for just ten minutes. Challenge yourself to see if you can really complete it in that short amount of time. Either you do and you scratched it off your to-do list, or you don’t but you have gotten past the barrier of starting.

• The Two Minute Rule

  • If there’s something you have to do that will take two minutes or less, just do it. Don’t even bother putting it on your to-do list, just knock it out immediately.

✪ Your action item this week is to try out just one of these ideas. Test it out for a full week to gauge whether or not it boosts your productivity. Keep trying a new starting hack each week until you find the one that works best for you.