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Work on the fun bits first

Posted by james on

I used to have a really hard time keeping up with a busy workload. I would get very overwhelmed by having a huge amount of items on my todo list. Or worse, I'd have just a few items on my todo list, each of which would entail dozens of hours of work each. That means that I can spend hours on a single task and make no apparent progress. That also means that I have to keep a ton of details in my head for each huge task item.

So the first step is to break down tasks into little chunks. I can't write "Make website" on my todo list; that's a huge item that spans hours, days, weeks. So break that down into "Create mock layout", "Create framework", "Make homepage", "Make signup page", etc. All of those are small chunks, maybe an hour of work each or so. They just have to be of manageable size. Also, all the details have to be on the list. If "make homepage" consists of 10 different separate items, then that task should really be split up further.

So now I've got a list with a whole lot of small items on there. Sometimes I have to work in a linear fashion, because one thing depends on another. But most of the time I have a choice of what to work on next. Instinct tells me I should pick the most important thing and work on that. So I used to pick the most important thing on the list and I would procrastinate on that for a while. If I got any work done, it would be slow and uninspired. And while there are other things on the list I wouldn't mind doing (they might even be fun), I couldn't do them because I'd feel guilty that I wasn't doing the "right" thing.

But this "priority first" method just leads to procrastination, slow working, dissatisfaction, and low productivity.

So instead I just started doing "fun first". I look at my list and pick whatever I feel like I'd most enjoy doing, and do that next. That means whatever I'm working is enjoyable, which means I'm working fast and being productive. When I've exhausted all the "fun" items, I work on the hard items. It's mentally a lot easier to work on the last two annoying items than it is to work on those same two when I know I've got a ton more to do after. While not true for everyone, it's definitely true for me.

Of course, there has to be balance; if there is a deadline then certain things must come first. And if items are dependent on each other, I have to do those in order. But even if there is a deadline, I can still apply the fun-first method on a smaller scale. There are 10 things I just *have* to get done by tomorrow. So I pick the most fun item, and do that. Keep repeating. Then I have 3 items left, all hard/annoying, and I work on those.

Why does this work? Logically, if each item takes a given amount of time then it wouldn't matter which order in which they're finished. But when I'm enjoying the task at hand, I'm a lot more productive. So working on tasks I enjoy is much more efficient than working on tasks I'm not into.

Then you'd think that since those hard/annoying items have to get done sooner or later, it wouldn't make a difference. But for procrastinators, if we have a ton to do and we procrastinate on the first item, then no work gets done. We waste time not wanting to do that "next" item, and so no progress is made on any of them. 4 hours go by, and I've only made a small dent on "Annoying task #1".

Contrast that to the fun-first method. We still don't want to do those annoying things and are putting them off, but meanwhile we're getting all the other items out of the way. Then when we finally reach the end, we're forced to do those last few remaining things. The same 4 hours go by, but this time I've finished 7 tasks from the list.

For non-procrastinators, I'm sure they can simply choose to be motivated and do their tasks in any order. They are like machines. That's just not how I work. I need to trick myself into working efficiently, and this method has really helped out. I've noticed a huge increase in productivity, and I have a lot less problem putting things off since I'm not just sitting on a single task that I don't enjoy; I'm working on (and completing) all those other tasks that need to get done.

There's also an encouragement aspect here. When I finish 7 tasks in a row and feel motivated, it's much easier to tackle a big annoying task. However, if I sit down at the desk first thing and start working on something annoying, it just saps the work out of me.