Since I often spend time thinking and talking about time management, I’ve pondered what makes some tasks difficult. Maybe it’s me, but it helps to consider why a specific goal is difficult for me. That is, if I articulate/recognize what makes something hard to do or hard to start, I often make more progress than if I just plow ahead (or spin in perpetual procrastination).
Some tasks are difficult simply because they take a long time to complete. There are no shortcuts. You just have to put in hour after hour after hour. Once I know that, the obstacle can be overcome because I either realize a) I don’t have time to do this, so I change plans or b) I have to put in time each day until some distant moment arrives and I will be done. What is amazing is that I really have reached the end of fairly massive projects just through day-to-day effort, including some super short sessions on hectic days.
Sometimes a task is difficult because some necessary bit of information is not available to me. That is, I don’t really know what I’m doing, and the truth is that’s more often than I realize. Lol. And sigh. But if I can figure out what I don’t know, I can then assess if a) I can learn/gather that information, b) I can muddle forward and eventually improve, or c) this is a dead end and I should seek some other version of this goal that is achievable. Though this is not a romanticized you-can-do-anything-Cama! way of thinking, it works pretty well for me. It sometimes means I have to change my goals or change my approach or extend my personal deadlines. But that seems wiser than always being stuck in place, unable to move forward because I didn’t assess the situation further.
Another way I’ve found tasks difficult that is harder to address, and that’s when the task creates anxiety for me for some reason. Often, the above steps help me manage anxiety because I have thought through the situation, but not always. Some tasks carry risks of embarrassment and/or failure and/or something worse. A few strategies that sometimes (but not always) help are to stop to recognize how I feel and then try to make sense of why I feel that way. What am I afraid of? Do I have any control of the risks I am facing? Can I plan ahead of what to do if things go wrong? (I am a habitual planner—you may have noticed this already. But I assure you I plan time to be spontaneous once a week 😉 ). Other strategies that can help is to treat an anxiety-producing task as a game or creative outlet. I love to embrace a sense of play whenever possible. And of course, all the strategies that help me manage stress can help with this stress too (exercise, sleep, time with friends/family, laughter, volunteer work, art, dance, music, etcetera).
And in any of these cases, I always need to know at least a few answers, or answers-in-progress, to this question—why does this task matter to me?
reader. writer. 