Beware of Skewing Small
January 15, 2020

     I am a chronic list maker, mostly of to-do lists.  I make one every day for my law practice – although I rarely get more than half the items done in a single day.  C‛est la vie.  I often make one (or two) for the home and farm on the weekends.  Perhaps somewhat ironically, one of the ways I know I‛ve got too much going on and need to step back a bit is when I don‛t even have time to make a to-do list – when something (or some constellation of somethings) is so urgent that it overrides the habit.

    I started making to-do lists in high school.  I didn‛t really use them or need them regularly before my senior year, but as that year marched on and college loomed, the press of deadlines and the juggle of my various commitments and goals sent me searching for a coping strategy.  One of my guidance counselors suggested that I write down everything that I needed to get done, then break each large task into the smallest sub-bits that I could imagine.  As you complete each and every sub-bit, she advised, reward yourself with a checkmark.  With each checkmark, you‛ll gain momentum toward completing the larger goal.

     She was right, of course, and those lists of mini-tasks have propelled me through many a difficult project over the last nearly quarter-century.  I have basically turned myself into a regular dopamine junkie, getting my fix checkmark by checkmark. 

     I suppose it‛s better than drug-induced dopamine hits, but it‛s not to say the strategy is entirely without risk.  The potential danger in focusing on micro-tasks is that over time your larger goals will skew toward the small, toward the achieveable, toward those things that are easily broken down into sub-bits – and away from worthy and important goals that don‛t so easily lend themselves to this process.  Long-term goals that depend heavily on collaboration with others can, if not specially tended, be jettisoned in favor of goals with a shorter shelf life and fewer potential relationship issues.

     I do not want to skew small.  And while I do not believe that big, important goals are necessarily incompatible with the micro-tasking strategy, I‛m trying to understand how to adapt the strategy in the service of worthy goals that take shape over long periods of time and require the cooperation of others.  It is no small task.