When you are faced with a big task, what do you do? Do you fear the task, or do you tackle it head-on? The majority of people will procrastinate and fear doing an enormous task. The task could be simple, but our mind tends to rebel even in the absence of challenge. The mind would like nothing more than to relax and take it easy, but we know that we must demand it to act. The actions and conscious choices we make have to begin somewhere. In this week’s T-U-S, I will share ways how you can turn tasks into bite-size pieces to increase the likelihood of doing and completing.

The idea of starting small seems counterproductive to having a strong mindset. Shouldn’t a strong mindset handle every situation and any problem? Not necessarily. The mind can be trained to handle big tasks, but it takes months and sometimes years to develop the habits and skills for the mind to digest a big task. I would like to give students and clients a massive amount of work in week one, but that will create a series of problems.

The first problem will create an association with resentment. This will make it challenging to find love in what they do, and their mind will not want to do the task willingly. The second problem is that it will create burnout. This will happen when a person is trying to put all their time into the effort with no chance for a break. That will include a person’s workload or mental load.  This tends to be an issue with many tasks, problems, and situations in our current society. The third problem is creating a habit in both physical and mental mannerisms. Those habits will either make you complacent, contingent, or conforming.

The Steps: How to Approach a New Task

1. Know your goal.

2. Break down the goal into small steps.

3. Create a schedule or routine.

4. Know some simple tricks to “recharge.”

5. Place a task behind the initial task.

6. Find someone to hold you accountable.

7. Don’t give up.

We should be looking at how easy it is to start a new task. I recall when I was speaking to my brother some months ago now. He told me he wanted to start his own business, and I told him what he needed to do. He wanted to skip doing a DBA and go straight to an LLC. I told him that was fine and to get it done. It took almost three months to complete this task. It wasn’t until I called him out on it did he take action. I recommend people start a DBA because it is the fastest and cheapest way to start doing business. Of course, having an LLC. is even better, but the momentum of starting will save you the time of procrastinating. Remember, any progress forward is good progress.

Procrastinating toward a new task is a habit many of us will find ourselves in. For example,  you may want to lose weight or start a business, so you procrastinate doing the work. You might create an excuse that you do not know how to start, so you must do some research first. Yes, this is true, but you do not need to research for five months to go to the gym. Getting yourself in shape is as easy as going to my website and signing up for a consultation. There you will figure out where you should start. The same is true for the several other areas I coach people in. However, even knowing this, people will not want to sign up because there will be doubts and skepticism that create barriers in your mind. We have to start thinking of new tasks or new goals differently.

The Goal/Task

To know where we want to be, we must understand where we are first. Many people ignore this step and blindly jot down goals and create vision boards hoping that this will spark the drive to move forward. Some people have success simply writing down or visualizing their goals, but not everyone will have this luck. Like how we all learn differently, your mind will be different from other people’s. That means what works for them might not work for you, so to figure out what works for you, you have to find out what goals you have and look at where you are compared to them.

If your goal is to get a promotion at work, we have to find out where we stand amongst other people in line for promotion. Now that we have the goal, we have to look at our track record and improve our advantage. Even though doing this work may not guarantee the promotion, we can rest assured that we did everything in our power. If we fail to reach the goal the first time, we will understand whether we still want to receive a promotion or was this a wake-up call.

Many people think they know what they want in life. They say they want a relationship, and they get one but are unhappy. They say they want a dog and get one but do not want to take care of it. This is true in many aspects of human desire. We want it because it is easy to want, but when we are faced with maintenance, we have to figure out what we are willing to maintain. The goal you pick for yourself should be more than just what you want. You must be ready to work and fight for it daily.

Small Bite-Size Steps

Doing the daily work needed to reach and maintain your goals/dreams may feel overwhelming at first. You might like a plan because it seems/feels appealing to you. However, when you have to start taking the steps toward that goal or task. If you treat this the same as you have been doing in the past, you will have the same results. Though pushing forward until your time comes is feasible, it doesn’t have to be what we do. We should see what we want and start to take the necessary actions toward the result.

When looking at a new task, you should see the steps needed to complete the task as a whole. You can break down each step into smaller micro-steps when you understand the steps. That means that step one might have multiple micro-steps that can be done to help your mind see how simple the task is. Though the task might consume a large amount of time, we can start the process. A mountain is not moved at once; it is moved a pebble/rock at a time. Eventually, you will reach your goal, but initially, it doesn’t happen all at once. We have to get in the habit and mindset of completing the steps and then completing tasks to become more ambitious.

Create a Schedule/Routine

Once you have the target and the steps to reach there, you must be ready to commit to a schedule/routine to ensure you achieve your target points. No matter the task or goal, there is a schedule we can create to aid us in reaching that mark. I see it happen the most when people make a goal and a routine but skip step two. They will maintain step one when that happens, but step two will fall apart. Think of missing a step, like not adding water to the cement mix. Though the cement mix was layered, molded, and left to “set,” it will not find strength because it missed the most crucial step.

Step two might not seem important, but the glue will make sure step three happens. To get step three done, you just have to write out your entire day in a 24-hour block schedule where you know what you are doing on the hour and every hour. If you are deviating from your schedule, you have to get back on track; otherwise, you will mess up your routine and possibly fall into bad habits.

This is a step I take seriously with new clients because when they come to me, it is because they are not getting through to their fullest potential. What I make sure of with the schedule and routines is that there is no wasted time in the day. If there is any wasted time, I can find it in your schedule, habits, and routines.

There is a reason many people do not reach the places they want to in life. Most of the time is that they lack direction. Creating a schedule will create all the direction a person needs. However, if you create a schedule and fall back into your bad habits and routines, then the schedule will be forgotten in a short time. To make sure we are pushing to reach our goals, get tasks done, and stay on track, we must follow our schedule.

How to Recharge

One of the best skills or understandings we can learn is to recharge quickly. This might include making sure you get to be on time or simply taking a nap at a specific time in the day. Those quick recharge points can be used to keep you pushing through the day regardless of how much work you have on the docket. This means that you can find the energy to complete all your daily desires and tasks if you have the energy to do so. This could be going to the gym, meditating, delegating work, eating, etc. There are many ways you can recharge, and it is up to you to find out what works best in your routine.

The premise of learning how to re-energize yourself will be one of the critical factors for how long you can keep making progress. This step will be necessary to start something but run out of energy or drive to finish. What energizes people will be different from person to person. However, three things can energize a person the right way: eating the right foods for your body type, getting some sleep, and doing something fun that doesn’t act as an energy drain. An energy drainer would be something like drinking alcohol. You might have fun going out with friends and drinking, but you will realize that you are hungover and have no energy the next day. There must be a balance between what works for you and what will work for you as you get older.

There are simple tricks to stay energized for the entire day. One trick is to have a scheduled rest time in the day. You can use this time to eat or take a nap. The next thing you can do is understand how to balance work and enjoyment. For example, if you want to study for a test, you only want to start in increments of 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, you can take a 5-minute break to “recharge your batteries.” Once you feel recharged, you can repeat the process for up to six hours.

Doing the work and then taking a break to do something you enjoy will create a better habit than forcing yourself to study nonstop for 6 hours. Studies and data have shown that taking short breaks throughout the studying process helps keep you motivated and helps you learn and retain the information better. Our brain is working even when we do not think it is working. It is essential to give it the pleasure and fuel it needs to do the daily tasks or be faced with lower energy levels and fewer actions for existing or new jobs.

I did something similar to this in college. Though my break windows were longer than five minutes, I would take breaks during studying. I would play guitar, go outside and play with my dog, or watch a movie or television show if I needed a more extensive break. Regardless of how long the break was, I could always return to studying with a stronger drive to learn more profoundly and diligently. I have found in college, if I had sat there and forced myself to study, I would lose focus and be miserable. Though pushing through that discomfort and misery is an option, it will create an unnecessary study stigma. Though studying is not a fun task in general, it doesn’t have to be a task we disdain to the point we want to procrastinate.

Future Task Placement

Once you start going after your goals or starting a new task, you must trick the brain into thinking differently. This can best be described after a long work week, Friday Night. The majority of workers in America at least dread Mondays and love Fridays. I am not talking about the fast-food chain; I am talking about the day of the week. People live to reach Friday because it is their chance to relax and not worry about work. People will spend the weekend recharging just to do their job again come Monday. This chain of energy drainage is not helpful when wanting to start a new task.

If you place a task behind another task, you will have more energy. For example, you might ask yourself about going to the grocery store. After the grocery store, you might want to go home and cook. If you do not create a task after cooking, your mind will go into sleep mode. You subconsciously allowed your mind to lose momentum and take a break. What that then does is have the brain release endorphins that make that time after cooking pure bliss. Now your brain doesn’t want to take action because it had time to take a break, and it wants to continue to feel good.

If you can’t see this in your own life, then ask yourself this question. Would you instead work the rest of your life with no breaks/vacations or work once a week and make the same amount of money year-end? Of course, you will choose to work fewer days and have more breaks. You might want to say that you wouldn’t mind working if you are doing something you love, and I call BS on that. The reason is that the mind will be an obstacle consistently. Even the greatest have to beat their minds when they want to get lazy.

Many people are lazy because they do not treat their goals and new tasks as mandatory factors. If you knew that you would have to complete a certain amount of tasks for your family to eat this week, you would find a way to make sure you get as many of those tasks done. The brain does not want to expend more energy than it needs, so if we fail to think forward and place goals and tasks behind other goals and tasks, we will reach a point in the day where the brain thinks it can rest. In reality, we might have much more to do that day, and this is where procrastination starts to settle in.

Find Accountability

To keep taking the necessary actions and not procrastinate, we must become accountable for our days and activities. If you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing consistently, you most likely need a coach to help you through those habits. It can be easy to take the easy road when no one is looking, but when you have someone looking at what you do on a given day, you will be more prone to make sure you can produce something for them to see. It might not be the whole thing, but at least the action was started.

The difference between working alone and with someone will be a night and day difference. For example, if I had a trainer in the gym, I would expect the trainer to push me more than myself. If the trainer didn’t do this for me, there would be no point in getting a trainer besides attaining simple knowledge of workouts and nutrition. There is a psychological effect on the mind that happens when someone pushes them. The mind has boundaries that it doesn’t like to cross. We know we can do more, but if the brain is telling us to stop, then there is a strong possibility that we will stop.

People will stop because of their conscious and subconscious thoughts. This just means that we are our own worst enemies. I would rather have someone in my corner which tells me I am not working hard enough even though I think I am. I know it isn’t an insult or a jab they throw at me to make me feel bad. It is a way for them to tell me that I have so much more potential to unleash, and to do that, I have to do more than what I’d do. That accountability will be essential for tremendous growth and staying on task.

Become Relentless

Once you have identified the direction of your goals, dreams, and tasks, you must start to think differently. The first way we must begin to consider is that we must be willing to put in all the necessary work to reach our target. If you follow steps 1- 5, you will be on the right path toward becoming relentless. The drive, ambition, and hunger to make advancements in life will create new desires for more than you have planned. Not only will you push past any obstacle or challenge until you win, but you will also look for new challenges to elevate you.

Becoming relentless is a mindset that will go after what it wants, and it won’t stop until it gets it. When applying relentlessly to a new task, you will see that no task is too big or small. You will overcome all tasks and look for more because you are ready for what may come your way. This step is the last because it is one where you do not need it to start the tasks you have underway. This step is for the creation of newer tasks. You are relentless when you will not take the easy road and will not give up on any task. You will find an ambition to complete any new task before finding a way out.

That ambition will not only lead you to seek more complex tasks, but it will help you start to start and finish them more quickly. A new task is only daunting if we see how much work is needed. When clients tell me the task or goal they want to accomplish, I tell them that it will require a lot of work and give them a time estimate. I am sure I get their hearts racing when I do this, but what I do next helps set their minds at ease. I tell them that I will be with them every step of the way. I will help break down each step, so the goal is not as daunting as they first were led to believe. Doing this helps them take action and remain active toward completing their goal.

Reaching the goals we have in life can sometimes take years. We have to understand how to stay motivated until the end and not make progress or start new tasks/goals. When faced with a new task, we have to be careful of burnout and follow these steps to help guide us to our true nature. That will be the quality of your work and the energy you put forth. When you need your next New Task, why not try out this process to see if it will work for you? This process is what I use when coaching clients, and it has helped countless people reach for more in their life.

Until then,

Michael Rearden

Founder of Reven Concepts