Doing Feared Things First

In a certain 'personal-productivity-obsessed' period of my life, I came across this little gem, and a few days ago I came back to the idea and decided to take it on as another fear-conquering experiment.

I'm a list guy, and within my intricately coded and cross-referenced (HA!) to do lists, I always come across what I will call 'D-listers'; those tasks that I almost vehemently resist, the ones that D-emonize me, stare me down; the ones I'm surprised even made it from my consciousness onto my list in the first place!

And, like most of us, I always act on the easier tasks first before attempting the difficult ones. I rationalize, "Once I get A, B, C done, then I will free up energy to tackle the big D;).

"And Good morning to you, Mr. Procrastinator."

But naturally it's those D-evilish tasks that usually move us forward faster, that have the greatest positive impact:
-Calling a new contact to whom you've never spoken.
-Starting on the big project (taxes) that you know will take some time and mental energy.
-Taking a walk to the yoga studio and getting a class schedule and brochure. These are just a few that, for me, require some confidence and a leap of faith.

So each morning this week, after my coffee, I've been trying to identify the action that my 'higher-self' (perhaps) is nudging me to complete. It's an easy process for me. I just think through all of things I have to do, and whatever task triggers the biggest twisting sensation in my stomach is my 'D' task. If it's a many step process, then I resolve to begin it, and give it a time limit. My default limit for working on D projects is an hour and a half.

Now here is the payoff I've discovered: If I can manage to accomplish the worst and most resistant action/project first thing in my day, then I start the day with a huge win, and it's like I just gave my inner-child permission to wreak havoc until sunset I play the guitar, I mess around with Sonnets (I'm weird), I watch 'Lost' on Netflix, or meet up with a buddy or two. Whatev, it's awesome! And generally, A,B, and C tasks are breezes in comparison.

Brian Tracy, personal development guru and teacher calls this process "Eating the Frog." (I like the image, so I apologize to the activists and to the imaginary frogs who have had suffer for my productivity.) So these past few days, I have been endeavoring to eat a frog each day. If I do nothing else, I feel satisfied that I got the one thing out of the way that that has been holding me back in some way or another. There is something to it... and let's face it...'D' is nuts. So conquer the insanity.