Next Task: The Small Step that will Take You Far

Do you ever find yourself delaying the work on a big project? Do you tend to favor unimportant small tasks to the detriment of what’s more important in the long run?

This is inconvenient, but natural: projects might seem overwhelming, and, let’s face it, we are overwhelmed too often. At the same time, the sense of having completed something - even a small unimportant task - is quite rewarding. To move forward with our long-term objectives, we need to use this effect to our advantage.

Just like you would cut your meal into pieces that fit comfortably into your mouth, you can divide your big and overwhelming projects into tasks small enough to handle in just 15 minutes. When you break up your project into the tiniest tasks, they fly under the brain’s resistance radar, and the overwhelm is no longer an issue.

Small steps will take you far. This approach was used successfully to rebuild Japan after WWII. Instead of significant changes, organizations introduced small improvements on the daily basis. It also works for personal goals. Robert Maurer tells the story of a cardiologist who asked his patients to march in front of the TV for just one minute, unlike his colleagues who prescribed the standard 20 minutes of exercise a day. His patients were exercising regularly, and for more than one minute, while the other cardiologists in the practice had little success with their patients in that regard.

FACTS:

People tend to delay working on a big project to avoid being overwhelmed.
Small tasks fly under the brain's resistance radar.
Small but constant improvements helped rebuild Japan from the rubble of the WWII.

Keep the Project in your Attention Budget to maintain the big picture, but only list the Next Steps on your To-Do list. This simple approach will have you making progress without having to rely on your willpower to push through the projects. Avoid the temptation to become a project manager – don’t map out all the tasks ahead, just the very Next Task. You don’t need to keep revisiting. Once the Next Task is complete, the next Next Task will snowball naturally.

SOLUTIONS:

List the very Next Tasks (NT) on your To-Do list.

Make the NT so specific it can be done in under 15 minutes.

Start the NT with

an action verb.

“If you ever feel yourself dreading the activity or making excuses for not performing it, it's time to cut back on the size of the step.”

– Robert Maurer,

Clinical psychologist at UCLA and author of

“The Kaizen Way: One Small Step Can Change Your Life”