Whenever I have a list of things to do, I find it very tempting to knock off everything except the one I need to be working on. It is always easy to justify doing something else (“I’ll have to do it anyway”).
Over the past weeks, I have, however, attempted to become more disciplined about working through the critical path. And, I do this by resolving to work on nothing but the highest priority item.
3 notes from having done so –
1. This approach makes negative stress caused by things you control non-existent. With this approach, you know you’re always making the right decision and that feels great.
2. You give yourself more time to iterate and polish since you’re not pushing things till the end. As long as you take the time to prioritize frequently, this approach enables you to get ahead.
3. And, by getting really ahead of stuff, you can proactively push items early in the critical path so you get started and let subconscious processing work its magic.
Fighting the resistance, and thus building your willpower muscle, is a habit. It is one I’m working hard on.
Image Source
(A long PS: Critical path is a term that makes a lot of sense after taking a course in Operations Management. I was, however, fortunate to learn about the concept before graduate school from a story from Seth once shared on his blog . The technique of doing nothing but the higher priority item/”MIT” as in the image above is another one I learnt two years ago from Roy Baumeister’s fantastic book on Willpower. It sure has taken me a while to implement both these lessons and is a good reminder of how long it takes for me/us to really learn, synthesize and act on important ideas.)
A Learning a Day 
