Notes from the Dentist: Do the Thing You Dread First

I, like many  people, do not love going to the dentist. I don’t have a phobia of it, but I can think of a million better ways to spend my time.

After rescheduling my cleaning not once but twice, I found myself in the waiting room today, a bit tense. It got me thinking about all the things we do in our businesses that fill us with dread. For you, maybe that’s writing blog content. Or managing your accounting software. Hiring people. Calling a client. From the small to the largest tasks, there are always ones that we drag our feet on doing.

And why do we put them off? I guess we think that later we’ll be better equipped to deal with them, though in reality we aren’t.

Our Flawed Logic in Putting Off These Tasks

I’m as guilty of procrastinating on those things I hate, but here’s why I think I (and you) are wrong for this approach: the more we put something off, the larger it grows in our minds. What might have been a simple five-minute task becomes gargantuan, at least in our heads, the longer we put it off.

Think about it.

Consider the last task that you kept postponing until another day. I’m willing to bet that the longer you delayed checking it off your list, the more brainspace that little task took up. By the time you actually sat down to do it, you were probably more stressed than necessary about it.

And did the task actually warrant all that memory it processed in the background of your head? I guarantee it didn’t. That’s why I think we’re better off tackling those things that we don’t want to do first. Rip the proverbial Band-Aid off, and fast.

Turn the Giant and Scary into Small and Manageable

As I lay back in the dentist’s chair, I tried to relax my neck muscles. I decided to be mindful about the experience; after all, I knew I’d be done in 30 minutes. It couldn’t be that bad. So I took each component of the experience separately. First, she measured my gums. Okay, that was tolerable. Then she scraped the plaque. Not fun, but quick. Flossing? Easy. Polishing? I’m almost outta here. Once I looked at the overall teeth cleaning experience as a series of much smaller and more manageable components, it was a lot easier to deal with.

So how can you apply this concept to your business? If you have something major coming up, like sending out an email campaign to your customers, break it down into bite-sized chunks:

1. Choose the product you want to promote
2. Write the email copy
3. Insert copy into email marketing software
4. Add images
5. Schedule to send out

You could do all of these at once, or you could spread them out, depending on how long they’ll take. But even if you tackle the entire project all at once, by identifying the five steps it’ll take to complete it, you cut yourself some slack about how difficult it will actually be.

Getting stuff done is a mind game. You sometimes have to convince your brain that it’s overreacting, and then train it on how to be efficient at actually getting something you dread accomplished.

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