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Many of us have long lists of things to get done during our day, and we approach it in different ways. We all know—or are—the super-organized person who writes out her list, ticks off the things as she finishes them, and watches the time to be sure she has enough time to complete her checklist. Or, we have a general idea of what needs to happen in our day, and we start on what we might view as the most important thing to be done first. We all have different ways of approaching tasks in our lives, and we also have put off things we know we should do sooner than later, but we keep pushing those until ‘later.’ Well, as we often find out, ‘later’ never comes, and something doesn’t get done. Why? Perhaps it’s something that we don’t enjoy doing, or perhaps it’s a difficult conversation we need to have with a co-worker or family member that we really don’t want to have. In these cases, we are already thinking of the ‘worst-case scenario,’ and feeling that it will be difficult, or draining, we put it off until later. Of course, the issues that do need to be discussed don’t get discussed, and the problem that pushed us to bring up the subject continues and nothing is solved. And so goes the cycle of not-accomplishing something.
There is an old adage that goes something like,’Success comes when you begin.’ Simple, and to the point. It says nothing about our fear of success or failure of any given task, or how we might feel about what we are about to face, but just the simplicity of starting. So. Start now. Take a few minutes and make a list of what needs to be done. Don’t skimp on anything or avoid the hard stuff because we aren’t actually doing anything right now; we are simply setting up things—planning—now to do later. Now take a look at the list in front of you and select the top five things to be done. From this shortened list, now choose one thing. This is what you will do next. Ideally, it will be something you can accomplish today, for if it requires too much time, you won’t be able to move through it quickly and be tempted to give up. So, if it can be done in about ten or fifteen minutes, choose this one. This task will be your small win for the day. But, wait, we’re not quite finished. We now need to make a decision to do this one thing. By taking the first step to begin this task and starting, you have made the decision easy by just beginning.
Yes, there are a lot of things we could be doing instead of this small task, but for habitual procrastinators, like myself, this is difficult work. But by giving ourselves those ‘small wins’ and begin to see that putting things off only complicates our lives, we begin to think in a different way, and the thought that maybe doing this now isn’t quite as bad as I thought begins to be replaced by beginning to see what can quickly and easily be done, checked off the list, and we are able to move on to other, perhaps more enjoyable things in our lives. We simply need to keep thinking, ‘just begin…’