Starting is hard. It means going from a standstill into some
useful activity that you may not feel confident about doing. Once you have
started, though, it’s much easier to
continue. That’s why I have a bunch of tricks for just getting started, any
which way.
One typical problem people have is that everything they need
to do seems equally important. Here are a few ways to handle it.
- Assign each task a number from 1 through X (whatever the
total is) randomly. Then do the tasks in that order. - Another, more fun, way is to write each one on a separate
index cards and then shuffle the deck. Turn over a card and do that task. Keep going
till you’re done.
If you realize when you do this that all the tasks are
actually not equally important, feel free to reorder them. Sometimes you don’t know
which is most important, or which is least important, until you put them in
some kind of order.
It’s easier to make decisions like this when you get it all
down on paper. When it’s just in your head, it’s too vague, too unreal. Writing
down a list of tasks gets you to think more concretely about them.
What if you’re still not sure about the order you’ve chosen?
Just get going. Even if you get to a point where you have to stop and do
something else that, it turns out, has to be completed first, you’ll probably
be farther along than if you tried to figure it all out in your head first.