Backlog: The Enemy of Starting and Catalyst for Procrastination

OK this should be a short post.... unless I somehow get into RANT mode... which may be a topic of another post by itself actually....

But yes don't you often get the feeling when trying to start something and then you feel resistance. You think about all the work you would have to do... and that it is indeed work as opposed to play. Hey another topic! I think I am back on a roll now! 

Crap... Just when I was getting started... time for dinner...

Updated 7:30PM Alright I'm back... 2 hours later
... Rebooting... Figuring out where I left...

So you start thinking about all the work you would need to do. Here are some examples but I am sure you can think of more:

• Blogging: I have another 5 post ideas... this is going to take a lot of time....
• Taxes: 
• September: I currently have 100 receipts that I need to itemize... let's do it next week... 
• + 1 week ... : more receipts ... will do it next week....
• April: so many now.... but I NEED to get this done or the government will be on me... CRAP, CRAP, CRAP, CRAP, CRAP!!!!!!
• Magazines/Online Courses: I am already behind by 3 issues/lessons... can I really catch up? how much time is it going to take? why bother?
• Books: my reading list has over 30 books... and each has 200+ pages... My Kindle collection has another 1,000+ and gets longer every week... I'm never going to be able to finish this... what's the point of starting.... Maybe I will read one when I am really, really, really bored...

And now you start thinking: What to do.... what to do, where do I start...

All the while...

1. Nothing actually gets done 
2. You get more and more stress out
3. The piles keep getting bigger

So what do I do? And I think what you should do

• Prioritize
• Make a recurring plan
• Follow it mostly and occasionally, grit your teeth and JUST DO IT!

So back to the example and here's what I do for the first two steps:

• Blogging
• Plan
• I'll try to do at least one post a week, assuming I have something to say
• I can also do it during my commute there are some really nice benefits to long commutes by public transportation
• There are also benefits to blogging See separate post
• Priority: medium-high, hey it's pretty fun and I have the time
•  Taxes
• Plan
• Every week or two, I will digitize the receipts and enter the amounts into an Excel file
• Mostly just keep the number of receipts needed to be processed low
• Priority: high, this stuff isn't as fun as blogging so have to kind of push it
• Magazines/SlideShare/News (these tend to fall together)
• Plan
• Magazines: keep it manageable and up to the month; can always skim
• Everything else: leisure activity, maybe just check a few times week, no real back-log with these
• Priority: medium
• Books
• I'll read the ones I find interesting and +1 if they are short but informative Yes +1 is actually good for something, I use it to mean that doing gives you some free bonuses so yea actually not Google's intended purpose
• Priority
• Short and/or useful: medium
• Need to know: high
• Kindle and long books: low... super low

OK so I think you get the point and it's been an hour so... just going to stop now... will wrap up and clean up maybe in another update.