How do we deal with the array of tasks, sub-goals, goals, achievements, milestones, accomplishments, short, medium, and long term goals? The list is dizzying! But there is a simple formula when it comes to success:

Success happens because a series of tasks were done in some particular order, with and eye toward a particular final state.

That seems fairly straightforward, but the fact is in practice it can be an enormous burden, and can seem like an insurmountable undertaking. Why does such a simple concept become such a pile of spaghetti complexity in real life? Well there are three answers to this question:

• Lack of prioritization
• Lack of proper task breakdown
• Lack of proper ordering

Lack of prioritization: Most of us, if we are the few percent who actually create a “to-do” list, just write down our tasks randomly as they occur to us. “At least we got them down on paper!” we figure. Well, that is a great step forward from just “keeping them in our heads”, but the problem is we usually tackle the first in the list, or the easiest one, (or the ones we like) not giving much thought to any type of prioritization of these tasks.

That is a real problem. There are some specific questions we need to ask ourselves about every task we have on our list:

1. How important is it with regard to our ultimate life goals?
2. How important is it with regard to our short term and medium term goals?
3. How important is it with regard to what I want to accomplish today?
4. Is it important enough to even do at all?

When we don’t analyze our tasks like this we usually end up doing many tasks that are unimportant, and end up with tasks that we never got to – but that were really more important than the ones we did.

We end up feeling like we worked very hard, but did not get much accomplished. This frustrates us, and can eventually make us give up all too easily on our ultimate desires. The problem is, we know at some deep level we were going around in circles and did not progress very far for all of the effort we put out.

Lack of proper task breakdown: Another problematic area is not breaking our tasks down enough, or breaking them down too fine. Tasks should be units of work that we can accomplish in a day or less, but they should not be so small that they are really just bits of a single piece of work. An example would be the construction of a house. Building the entire house is not a task; it cannot be performed in a single day. Putting on the roof over the garage might be a single, day-long task. On the other hand, nailing down a single shingle would not be a task.

So the proper idea of a task is “something I can start doing now, and get done by at least days end.”

Lack of proper ordering: Sometimes tasks cannot be done effectively until some other task is done first. This is proper ordering. The problem is as humans we tend to like certain tasks and not like others so much. Sometimes the tasks we do not like are the ones that really need to be done before the tasks we like can be started. A proper perspective about the ordering of our tasks is needed here.

In addition to this, there are some tasks that need to be repeated at some rate. Exercise is an excellent example of a daily task that needs repeating and needs slow but constant change with regard to increasing weights, or increasing the repetitions of various workouts. Our task completion is much more effective when we know this specifically.

So it becomes clear as we think about tasks that there are more effective ways to deal with them before we actually start doing them. Ordering our tasks by priority, breaking up those that are too large, combining those that are too small, or simply dumping those that are not helping us makes our list of things “to-do” the most effective it can towards moving us quickly to our goal.

Don’t miss the next article where I will discuss how tasks are the children of goals, and what the significance of goals and milestones are.

- David T. McKee

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Note: This is copy-righted content, Copyright  2008, David T. McKee