Managing and completing your annoying tasks

This is an IHart podcast. guuaranteed human Welcome to Before Breakfast A production of IHart Radio. Good morning This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast Today's tip is to make a list of annoying tasks By keeping track of all the things that you need to do but don't particularly want to do, You can motivate yourself to make progress keep these tasks in perspective and hopefully won't miss any deadlines along the way I was recently feeling a bit weighed down by the volume of tasks I knew I needed to tackle at some point Many of these were annoying and multip partart For instance, I needed to sign some financial paperwork, which I thought would be straightforward. But then I had trouble logging in. I had to submit other forms before I could sign things etcer I needed to file a tax report about my retirement account and Another one about an LLC I need to update my clearances to volunteer at my kids' schools. and so on In many cases, I feel like these systems are needeedlessly complex. They take time that they don't need to. This is time that I am not writing or playing with my kids or doing something fun for me Oh no things that I find Annoyay But in life, it's important to recognize when we can change things because then we should try to change things and when certain things are fairly outside our control unlikely to get to change the setup that the school system has put in place To process volunteer clearances any of these other things They must simply be dealt with So to make this all feel less onerous, I made a list of all the annoying tasks that I know I will need to deal with at some point in the near future My first takeaway is that the list wasn't infinite Don't get me wrong, it was long But it wasn't infinite. So that was helpful to see Then I could see what had to be done immediately and what didn't. The financial paperwork needed to get turned around, but We're out of school now and we'll be for a while So the clearances be shoved forward As part of this, I could also pace myself by my assigning myself one annoying task per week I could muster all of my excess energy to deal with that one task I wasn't feeling bad that I didn't file the LLC paperwork one week becausecause that was the week I was dealing with the retirement account forms The LLC stuff could happen the next week When you assign yourself only one task per week, It has a much higher chance of getting done Or, at least that's what I have found is true for me I try not to put things on my to do list that I don't actually intend to do So once an annoying task was on the list for the week I generally do it becausecause again only One And now I've been the happy beneficiary of the truth that if you keep making small progress The list does eventually go down I've done several of the annoying tasks. And while more do come up Alas The pace has been such that the list is getting smaller I've been crossing things off. at a steady clip. Perhaps you will find the same thing. So if you two are feeling weighed down by the list of nagging. complicated unpleasant tasks you need to do Try listing them all So you have a sense of them You want to make sure you are not forgetting stuff This will also allow you to make sure that you don't miss deadlines Because you can triage to do the immediate annoying tasks before the ones with a farther off deadline And then you can assign yourself the tasks at a steady pace So you get through them You can take comfort from the fact that the list is probably not infinite It may be long But it won't be infinite Am I still annoyed that one camp won't accept our electronically signed health form from our pediatrician So someone has to bring the camp's particular forum to the office and get it signed Yes Yes, I am annoyed But if that is the only annoying task I have to deal with in a week, well, Maybe I can just drop it on the way somewhere and seend someone else to pick it up and be so bad in the grand scheme of things In the meantime This is Laura Thanks for listening And here's to making the M of our time Thanks for listening to Be Bakfast If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback You can reach me at Laura at laauraandercam. com Before Breakfast is a production of iHart Media For more podcasts from iHart Media, please visit the IiHart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows