How to Tell What You Should Work On First

For a lot of people, knowing what to do is the easy part – it’s the figuring out what to do first that’s the harder issue. When you’ve compiled a hefty list of actions you need to take to push forward all of your goals, it can often be a paralyzing event (as we discussed earlier).

So what do you do when you are faced with a big list of items, and you haven’t sorted out the priorities in a way that clearly lays out what you should work on? Or worse, what do you do when the list is intimidating you with so many “equally important / equally urgent” priorities, that you just don’t know what to work on first?  The answer is simple …
Here’s the trick: just grab something easy and do it immediately. Don’t worry about priorities and don’t stress about whether it’s the absolute best thing to be working on in the moment. You see, when you’re in this state of overwhelm, you’re feeling powerless, and feeling powerless kills your ability to take solid action.

So the antidote is to get some closure on something – anything – that will help to kick-start your momentum. If you have a huge stack of to-dos, but you just got one accomplished, you feel better. Sure, you may still feel some stress around all the other unresolved items, but at least you are taking action now.

Then grab the next easy, palatable thing off your plate and knock that out. And the next one, and the next one. Mark each one on a post it and stick it to your wall so you can see them add up fast. It will feel good.

Now, your first reaction may be that this flies in the face of the teaching that you should tackle the most difficult / painful tasks first, so you get them out of the way. That’s great advice, and I don’t disagree with it at all … if you’re already in the mindset where you’re ready to take solid action.

But when you’re trapped in that paralysis mode where you feel locked up with overwhelm, where you’re in “priority gridlock”, that’s not going to cut it. You’re already at a place where it’s hard to bring yourself to take any action, let alone the most difficult one. So just get somethign done to break that cycle.

And here’s the best part – by tackling a number of easy, relevant tasks in a row you’ll start to break that fatigue. I discovered this principle years ago during my running training. There were a lot of days I didn’t want to exercise, but I knew if I just got to the gym and got on that treadmill for 15 minutes, all my energy would be unlocked. Getting started is always the hardest hurdle to jump over.

And that’s how it is with your list of tasks. If you’re feeling locked up and unmotivated, start laying down some accomplishment with a rapid succession of easy wins. After a few you’ll break through that wall of resistance and be able to act on those more difficult tasks.

Another great benefit comes when your brain starts to relax. Before you were worried about not making progress on the right things first, and so you were barely making progress on anything because of that “what do I do first?” tension. But now that you’re making progress on something, regardless of what it is, your brain gets the signal that things are moving forward, your stress level drops, and you’re able to look at the big picture from a more empowered stated of mid.

So now you know what to do. When you’re faced with overwhelm or confusion on priorities, just start doing something. Before too long it will become clearer what you need to be working on, and now you’ll have motivational to do it.