Taking on the Mammoth

ektalakhera1
Aug 10, 2023
5 min read

How to tackle the BIG and BULKY tasks

Recently I found myself in a conversation with my friend who seemed troubled by a big task that she had been assigned by her manager. “I need to do it , I know but I don’t know how to start. It’s going to take months before it’s finished and It’s sitting at the very bottom of pile of work that needs my attention “

I’ve always loved the challenge of a Big task. These tasks may seem like your enemy but in-fact they can be quite the opposite. The more time consuming , multi- faceted tasks are more forgiving in terms of deadlines, can be juggled with other things and are more growth oriented, develop more skills than some easy ones. I have been grappling with such a mammoth task myself. Even when I have everything down but the size and effect of the job is always daunting at first. Here I am listing down some things that have helped me with my pursuit and hoping it helps yours.

Rip the band-aid

You might feel the urge to select a good time and date to sit down, a great environment with the right music and the right coffee at the right temperature but it might not be the best strategy for motivating yourself long term. Adding a ton of other factors that help you get into the groove of working rather than the actual dirty hard-work might set you up for failure. Recently I got myself deep into the wormhole of Andrew Huberman neuroscience for work and motivation. I learned to my surprise that all the steps I took to soothe myself into the big tasks might not be in my best interest. According to Mr Huberman, to develop long term motivation for task-completion, its beneficial to just rip the band-aid and start working without adding any additional lubricating factors like coffee or music. One has to essentially ‘feel the friction’ of hard-work and eventually start enjoying the challenge that it poses. Rather than trying to mitigate that discomfort , one has to learn to battle with it . The reward being that eventually that friction starts to feel enjoyable. This can be incredibly beneficial as an infinite source of inherent motivation. It is notably a common trait among high achieving individuals in all spheres of life, they enjoy the friction of challenge.

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Create a flow not a list ( A chi is what you need)

During my last year of engineering I was juggling the major task of finishing my dissertation with other crucial ones like sitting in interviews , studying for upcoming final exams. I felt overwhelmed at the time and started the phenomena of what I now call the ‘Post-pocalypse’. Everyday I would wake up and list the tasks I needed to do on a post-it. Soon enough my space was filled with post-its, on my laptop, on my notebook covers, on the fridge, on my desk. I had successfully overwhelmed myself with tasks and deadlines .

As I look back at it with some sympathy for my younger self I realise, what I thought was an innocent method to remember things to do, overtook my time and filled it with other-people’s priority work and the list would keep on getting taller as emails poured in throughout the day. Hardly ever, could I complete the long task list I prepared for myself and even though I would do so much in a day, at the end of it, the feeling of inadequacy would fill me on not having ticked off all my tasks. It was a tough realisation that I was not honouring my own priorities. In this time I stumbled upon a book that changed the game for me, Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. This book has some amazing strategies to help manage your time, completing big tasks and leaving room for the things that you might have been wanting to do for yourself like writing a book or learning a new language.

Break it, till you make it !

Rome was not built in a day. Bigger, chunkier tasks are better broken down and tackled one day at a time than all at once. For eg: For the task of writing a book , one would have to consider researching, writing a brief plot summary , doing the character work, writing one chapter at a time , doing multiple drafts etc . Making a plan where one breaks down all these smaller tails of the large task and assigns a date to each element makes the climb seem less steep. My brain has always worked to compartmentalise tasks and break them. I always like to poke and prod the work, see how long it will take from start to finish, how many tails it might have, if there is any help I would need to finish it, if need to research before starting. Akin to understanding the dragon before slaying it. Creating a flow of work comes next and its an absolute must in my books for having a work life balance.

The question then becomes how is it that you do you get to these elements with other work related timelines in the day that seem to come and go as they please. For this we have a good method which I’ve gladly borrowed from the book, ‘Make time’ mentioned above with some personal revisions of course. Each morning while commuting for work I take some time to go to my favourite app ‘to-doist’ to create a list of three things that I absolutely needed to tackle that day . One of them would be a smaller element of my big task which I label on my to-doist as the ‘ One task’. The ‘one task’ is the non-negotiable of the day and the rest two would be based on both priority and volume. Initially it seemed almost like cheating but doing three tasks has not only improved my efficiency at work but also made room for me to do the things I’ve been stalling like getting on my exercise regimen. It is all about realistic goal setting and preventing a burn- out.

Another way to maximise your goal setting is specially for the people who love their google calendars and plan their day down to the minutes. It’s helpful to block some time everyday for your ‘ the one’ task on your google calendar. This allows you that time where you only focus on your task and it and even share with your co-workers for that undisturbed time to get it done.

In consistency and good conscience!

If you ever doubt the power of consistency just ask someone who has lost a considerable amount of weight or learnt a new skill. Putting in the work everyday is hard to replace. You might be great at being razer focussed when you work but doing it inconsistently isn’t helpful. Everyday’s work compounds and helps develop skills and knowledge which makes tackling tasks easier than when you started out.

I hope you found this helpful , below I’ve listed the apps, books and websites I’ve mentioned in my blog. Have a look: