The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Low­er­ing the threshold

The more dif­fi­cult it is to retrieve or find what you need, the greater the risk becomes of you choos­ing to do anoth­er task instead. Most of the peo­ple I meet in my work tell me that they are some­times tempt­ed to do some­thing that feels easy before some­thing they per­ceive as difficult.

If you can make it as easy as pos­si­ble to quick­ly find all the infor­ma­tion you need to do the task, the like­li­hood of it get­ting done increas­es. You will prob­a­bly fin­ish it before it is due, with greater fore­sight and not at the last minute, and as a con­se­quence, your work becomes both eas­i­er and more enjoyable.

This is exact­ly why you should com­pose a ​”get some­thing done easily”-kit.

Do this

If you want to make it eas­i­er to get cer­tain tasks done, then do this:

1. Select a task you do from time to time for which you need dif­fer­ent kinds of infor­ma­tion or mate­ri­als that need to be retrieved from dif­fer­ent places.
2. Decide where you will keep your ​”get things done easily”-kits since you might end up mak­ing more than one. The loca­tion needs to be eas­i­ly avail­able and it is excel­lent if you can share it with oth­ers if you want or need to so that your col­leagues (cur­rent and future) can make use of the sim­pli­fy­ing tool you will have cre­at­ed as well as add their own, which you, in turn, will find use­ful as well. This loca­tion could for instance be:
   • A fold­er with the kits as Word- or text-documents
   • A note­book in OneNote with one page per task
   • A note­book in Ever­note with one note per task
   • A board in Trel­lo with one card per task
   • Google Keep with one note per task
3. Now cre­ate the kit and include what­ev­er you need for the task you have chosen.
   • Add a check­list for every step of the task, and/​or
   • Add links to the doc­u­ments you need to be able to access quickly
   • Add links to the web­sites (inter­nal or exter­nal) that con­tain infor­ma­tion you need when work­ing on the task
   • Add stan­dard­ized texts you might need while work­ing such as, for instance, what you always include in the email you send some­one after fin­ish­ing the task and report­ing back to them how it went, what the results were, etc
4. The next time you need to per­form the task (per­haps even today?), use your new ​”get some­thing done easily”-kit and pay extra atten­tion as you do the task so that you notice if some­thing still feels dif­fi­cult and you might be able to sim­pli­fy it even fur­ther. Adjust and refine the kit if you come to think of an improvement.

More time to get things done

If you make it eas­i­er for your­self to quick­ly access every­thing you might need when doing some­thing, the tasks will take less time to actu­al­ly do. You will make less effort than before and will have both time and ener­gy for oth­er tasks instead (or for doing noth­ing, for that matter).

What’s your way?

How do you ensure that cer­tain tasks get done with as lit­tle effort as pos­si­ble? Have you assem­bled some oth­er kind of prac­ti­cal kit or solu­tion? Feel free to share your thoughts with me!

(Do you know what is in my favorite kit that I bring to my talks?)