There is a certain beauty in the daily struggle we have to do regular things.

We all struggle to do something. It doesn’t matter who you are or how well you can do most things there is always something that is harder for you than it seems for most people. For me at this time in my life it is most definitely language. I am really struggling to put the pieces of French that I know together in my head, wrap my tongue around the words and spit them out in a way that is comprehensible to a native French speaker. Its a little funny that I have to make that distinction, but for most people I speak to, the foreigner understands my French and the local doesn’t. I think its about accent and the expectations of the individual, the non native speakers recognise the sounds I am trying to make from their language, and often make the same ones as me when trying to imitate certain French words. For us it seems so simple to connect the sound I am making to the French word. For the native speakers it is more difficult, they know exactly how the word should sound and aren’t expecting to hear much else, this can be quite tough at times.

All tasks that we undertake require energy, and so often the energy required at the beginning of the task is the majority of the energy required for the task. Once you get past that first little bit the rest follows naturally and easily. It is the activation energy of a task that can prevent us from beginning the task in the first place. However, activation energy is a funny thing, sometimes it drives us to do other tasks instead.

I recently had a project from work that was time critical and labour intensive. These two things combine to make a perfect storm that many people have experienced but may not have been aware of at the time. The uni students and scientists among you will definitely be aware of this phenomena. As the deadline draws near you go through several phases, the driving force that says you should get started on the task begins to build. As it grows we reach a point where we can’t avoid the reality that we should be working on that big project. At this point there are two options really, the good choice is to start working on the project. The option most people chose however, is procrastination. Delaying the task as long as possible. There are two types of procrastination and which kind we move into I feel is dependant on how important the task at hand is.

When the task that is providing this driving force is not particularly important we get the first kind of procrastination. The unproductive kind, it leads to things like “I should be doing #### but I’ll just check my emails…” this can go on for hours. The second kind of procrastination occurs when the task you are avoiding is important. The thought process goes something like this… “I should be doing ####, it’s really important. So if I am not doing #### I should have a good reason…” This type of thinking leads to productive procrastination. We fill our lives with productive minor tasks that all have a lower activation energy than the major task we are avoiding. These minor tasks are still important thing that need to be done and by completing them we can justify to ourselves not starting the major task because we are getting things that needed to be done finished.

Now this is all a game that is played out across the globe daily, we balance the check books inside our heads telling ourselves that we are coming out on top. So the question is how to use this information, when you recognise that the unproductive procrastination is not your friend you can watch out for the signs and turn your productivity on its head. The key to success in this is breaking the task down into smaller easily achievable tasks.

Instead of looking at learning French as a whole I am starting to break it down, into small tasks or challenges that I need to tackle. Learning fifteen new words a day on memrise greeting my boss in French, taking another course or calling a plumber. Small tasks have lower activation energy and don’t seem as daunting. This means that I can start them and run through from one task to the next.

Setting these kind of goals can allow you to build all kind of things. The more I do it the more I find that the key to working productively is to break the tasks down and finish each one as you go along, its a simple secret. One we all should know but I think sometimes it gets lost when we try to focus on the big picture.

In the end balancing big picture foresight and jigsaw puzzle task management (one piece at a time) is the best way to be productive in the long term. So take a step back today, see what the big picture task you are trying to achieve is and try to break it down into bite size pieces, you will be surprised how much faster you can get it done.

Cheers,
Daniel