Master your 5-Minute Tasks that Seem Impossible

by Brad Isaac on August 20, 2006

Have you ever noticed that some of the tasks that sit undone on your
task list are ones that only take 5 minutes or less to complete?

How can that happen? Even as pressed for time as we are, we still
have 5 minutes available. It would be outrageous if there had been a
task sitting undone in your list for 5 weeks if it only took 5 minutes
to do in the first place — wouldn’t it?

But these are the tasks that feel impossible sometimes. There
is real or imaginary pain associated with them. We imagine clearly how
painful it will be to do these tasks. That is why they are the ones we
put off as long as we can.

Here is the start of a list of tasks that take 5 minutes but feel impossible to do:

1.  Write a hand written thank-you note
2.  Eat a piece of fruit.
3.  Unpack a suitcase the moment you get  back from a trip.
4.  Carry a box of old papers from the attic to the trash.
5.  Drink the recommended daily allowance of eight 8-ounce glasses of water.
6.  Rewrite the 3 most important tasks of the day and get to work on the top ranking task.

I know you have some impossible 5-minute tasks too!  That’s why I left my list so short, so you could add yours to the list. 

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{ 3 comments }

August 21, 2006 at 5:09 pm

This was an excellent post Brad and thanks fro dropping by. One of the things that turned the corner for me getting more comments was reaching out to other bloggers by commenting (politely) on their sites and they reciprocating. The blogosphere is all about the ‘conversation’ and networking.

BTW, I’ve added you to my newsfeeds list.

Cheers!

…BB

August 21, 2006 at 7:22 pm

Thank you for stopping by Blog Bloke.

for those of you wondering what we’re talking about, I had responded to a comment of his in his excellent article 10 Reasons Why I Don’t Like Your Blog

It’s interesting you say that. I normally don’t have a lot of time for surfing around too much. But I’ll try it! :)

Mark October 31, 2006 at 3:38 am

Hey Brad,

This is definitely true. I have a bunch of tasks I’ve never gotten to. Any suggestions to fix the problem?

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