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28 Jan

Limit the small to benefit the large


Datum: 2025-01-28 10:16
A large black-and-white Great Dane is curiously looking down at a small, fluffy, golden-colored puppy sitting beside it.

Estab­lish­ing a struc­ture that ensures you have time for all the impor­tant things you need to do can be dif­fi­cult. There are many traps and pit­falls to poten­tial­ly stum­ble into with the con­se­quence of los­ing time, focus, and tempo. 

One aspect that has a ten­den­cy to make things dif­fi­cult for us is how the size and scope of the impor­tant tasks can vary great­ly. Let us say that you have both impor­tant and exten­sive tasks that take a long time to com­plete as well as short, impor­tant tasks that you can fin­ish quickly.

These impor­tant tasks can be assign­ments you are doing for clients and which you charge for (they obvi­ous­ly con­tribute to you reach­ing your rev­enue goals and are, there­fore, impor­tant) or they can be oth­er things you do that def­i­nite­ly con­tribute to the attain­ment of the goals you are respon­si­ble for reach­ing — even if they are not direct­ly relat­ed to clients (or what­ev­er your busi­ness call those your com­pa­ny serves). 


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


A nev­er-end­ing inflow

Some peo­ple tend to think that they ought to get the small tasks out of the way first so that they can work undis­turbed and with more focus on the more exten­sive tasks lat­er. I get the idea and I am most famil­iar with the temp­ta­tion, but the prob­lem usu­al­ly is that these peo­ple have a con­stant inflow of impor­tant small­er” tasks. This means that they rarely get to the bot­tom of the pile and thus get to those exten­sive, more dif­fi­cult tasks they have been sav­ing much lat­er than they would have liked.

This con­sti­tutes one of the cir­cum­stances in which we need to estab­lish bound­aries for our­selves since the default lack of bound­aries is get­ting us into trou­ble. We need to put our foot down and stop giv­ing pref­er­ence to the small impor­tant tasks.

Do this

If you tend to pri­or­i­tize small­er tasks and let the more exten­sive ones wait their turn a bit too long, then do this:

  • Take a minute or two to esti­mate what a rea­son­able dis­tri­b­u­tion of small ver­sus larg­er impor­tant tasks would look like for you and how much time you ought to allo­cate for each type. Should you split them down the mid­dle, 50/50? Or divide them up 8020? I have no idea what the right pro­por­tion is for you, your job, or your sit­u­a­tion, so this is entire­ly up to you (and, I assume, your boss and colleagues).
  • How many hours every day or week will you allow your­self to spend on the small­er tasks (since these are the ones that tend to take over, they are the ones in need of some boundaries)?
  • Just to make things eas­i­er, try doing the small­er tasks all in one go. I sug­gest you try doing as many as you pos­si­bly can dur­ing a set time. You could, for instance, sched­ule time-to-work-on-small-tasks”-slots in the cal­en­dar or set a timer when you com­mence work­ing on the short tasks. Once you have reached the set time lim­it for the day or week (what­ev­er suits you best), set the small yet impor­tant tasks aside and focus whole­heart­ed­ly and with a clear con­science on the more exten­sive and also impor­tant tasks instead.

Get more done with greater foresight

If you lim­it the small­er tasks to ben­e­fit the larg­er ones accord­ing to a quo­ta you have deemed appro­pri­ate, you will have more time for the exten­sive tasks than your oth­er­wise would have. You will fin­ish them with time to spare and with­out as much stress and anx­i­ety towards the end as you usu­al­ly feel when you do not keep the temp­ta­tion of doing small tasks in check.

What’s your way?

How do you ensure you main­tain a sus­tain­able dis­tri­b­u­tion of small and large tasks? Please feel free to email me to share your thoughts. 

(By the way, do you know these oth­er four tricks to help you pri­or­i­tize impor­tant tasks?)


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