At the end of a month, there’s usually a lot of random nonsense that has built up. I’m testing out a strategy for dealing with that by dedicating the least-important day in the last week of the month to task crushing.
Here’s what I do.
Write down every task
This is similar to the GTD method of dumping everything from your brain. I write down the main categories that tasks sit in, and then I sit down for 10 minutes and scribble down everything I can think of, no matter how trivial.
“Host webinar” goes down on the list right with “Get a vitamin holder”. I keep going until I can’t think of anything.
Rank them
I use a simple dot system to rank the categories, then I go into the tasks themselves. One dot is most important, two is middle, and three is least.
Once I’ve done this for categories and the tasks underneath them, I then move on to phase three.
Crush them
Start with the most important category, and the most important task(s) in that category. START CRUSHING. This entire day is a race and a game. By gamifying the day, you get to crush out a bunch of random (and usually boring) tasks and feel like a boss due to your output. Sure, they might be low value tasks in isolation, but by crushing 30 in a day you’ll be doing a few cool things:
- Eliminating mental friction – It’s a lot easier to focus when you’re not constantly reminded of random things you forgot to do, or have to do soon.
- Eliminating real-world friction – It’s a lot easier to focus completely through on a task if you’re not stopped by little things that are holding your progress up by 10m-1hour each.
Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.