I’ve noticed on occasion there will be a task on my list I am putting off. For the most part, delaying important tasks isn’t ideal if there isn’t a good reason behind the delay.
What I’ve found helps to get me working on a task I’ve been putting off is to ask the simple question “Why am I delaying this task?”
I might ask myself some follow up questions too:
- Is it really that difficult?
- Is it time consuming?
- High odds of failure?
- Does it rank low in importance?
Many times I come to the conclusion that the task in question answers NO for all of those questions.
If it’s not difficult, time consuming, low in importance or high odds of failure, then why would I put it off? Who knows? I’ve probably built up an emotional “hassle factor” that doesn’t really exist.
A good example is I recently bought a new hard drive to use on my home machine for file backups and increased storage capacity. I was running low.
So installing the hard drive was an important task. Yet I had put it off for several days. Why? It just seemed like a hassle.
Reality sets in: I’ve installed probably 100 hard drives in my life so it was easy to run through the steps.
1. Shut down PC (I hate shutting down more than once a day)
2. Unplug it
3. Take top off computer case
4. Set jumpers on Hard drive
5. Plug in hard drive to motherboard and power cable.
6. Replace case top.
7. Plug in power
8. Boot machine, check CMOS for the presence of new hard drive.
9. If successful boot into Windows XP and I’m done.
So what I was really looking at was 10-15 minutes of work. Maybe longer if the drive didn’t mount properly. But if everything went well, I’d be done in virtually no time and be able to have a new backup repository, have more storage space and to cross this task off my list.
Ultimately, I realized I was putting of a perfectly simple task for reasons like “I don’t like shutting down unless absolutely necessary” and “What if the drive fails to mount?” Immediately I recognized a mirage was in the way of this task. Now I could clearly see how easy the task was and how ridiculous my reasons for delaying were.
10 minutes after I saw the task from a different perspective, my new hard drive was installed and I was booting into XP. 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post. There are time when we very low on spirit and we just have to skip or delay our task. I know that it isn’t that easy to force ourself to do it. But if we train our brain how to deal with this problem, I think it wouldn’t be that difficult.
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I agree with Dave that we just have to train our brain in doing those things. If we keep on telling our brain that we have to do positive things and avoid negative thoughts, then it will slowly become a routine.
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