Stop Wavering. Set A Three Minute Timer.

This is how you assess your current priorities in life through action.

Without this practice, you may continue to just waver between a million different things, not getting anything done, so I’d recommend sticking around for a couple minutes.

In order to explain, let me give an example.

If you’re anything like me (and if you’re reading my content, you probably are), you are curious about TONS of things in this world.

Not only that, you probably commit to too many things because they sound interesting and fun.

First, stick around because I have quite a bit of messaging strictly surrounding overcommitting, but in the vein of this topic, let’s stick to the priority 😉

So lots of curiosity can lead to many priorities and those priorities typically are open ended so that then leads to an open canvas of possible things that you could be doing.

Literally one time at university I entered and won a pitch competition for an idea I had that I thought was clever.

They gave me a stipend to spend researching it.

But at the same time I was finishing up my electrical engineering degree that I paired with the pre-med track, while I was building a senior design project building synthetic vision using audio cues with a partner, while searching for a job after school, and also trying to manage the various life-experiences and responsibilities of being 22 and entering the adult world.

And so I assume you can guess how much time I spent on this project from the pitch competition?

Yeah, basically none.

Got totally overwhelmed.

Didn’t build anything.

Just fell off the map, didn’t talk to anyone about it, and eventually no one cared and nothing happened.

I wasted a ton of energy thinking about it, but nothing ever came out of it besides wasted time.

Had I done what follows next, there would have been a different outcome.

So the question is clear, when you have a million things you feel like you have to do…

What do you choose?

Here’s the simple procedure.

In fact it’s so simple that you’re probably going to hate it.

1. Set a 3 minute timer.
2. Pick the top 3-5 goals or tasks you feel are important and that you’re wavering between. We want high-level (For example “Finish my presentation”, “Get an A in class”, “Get a new job”, etc.)
3. Identify a 10-15 minute task you could do to make small but tangible progress in each of these. (“set up powerpoint tile page and contents”, “study __ subject”, “connect with 10 new people on linkedin”, etc.)
4. If, during this process you notice that one of these higher level goals is clearly sticking out as the thing you know you need to work on, choose the task associated with it. For example, if you write them out and then think “Oh, yeah, if I don’t do that I won’t be able to pay for food tomorrow” then you clearly know what your priority is.
5. Do that task. Literally forget everything else in the world and do that thing.
6. When you are done with it, you will now look at all of the high level goals and assess “after completing this, do I feel like any of these goals are less or more urgent than I did originally?”
7. Using your gut reaction to this response paired with practical insight (“Will I get fired for not doing __?”), you should at this point have a more clear picture of the order of these goals. If you don’t go back to step 3. Repeat until you have a more clear picture of the order of your priorities.

Why does this work?

Because it is based in action.

You are very likely to go through this process and almost immediately recognize after the first workblock something along the lines of one of these:

• “Yeah, this is clearly what I should be doing, I was just resisting it”
• “Yeah I chose the right goal, but honestly I should be doing __”
• “Ah, that wasn’t right, I should have chosen __”

In all of these cases, you determine through evidence what you should be doing.

Worst case scenario?

You have just made forward progress with respect to one of your goals.

Literally that’s the worst case scenario, that you made progress.

Even if it took a whole day of iterating like this, you would have spent an entire day taking actions that moved you forward.

If I had done this, I would have spent time pursuing the project I pitched.

And you know what I would have realized quite immediately?

That I had to give it up.

And that would have been painful emotionally and probably hurt my ego to do.

But that is a different problem than not knowing what to do.

And in reality, that’s usually the problem anyways.

This exercise is just a fantastic method for surfacing that problem in the first place.

Give it a try, let me know how it works.