{"id":3280,"date":"2015-07-31T09:55:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T16:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/?p=3280"},"modified":"2015-07-31T09:55:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T16:55:29","slug":"guilt-free-tasks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/guilt-free-tasks\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilt-Free Tasks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>July 31, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How many tasks are on your list that have been sitting there for a while, and you feel guilty about not completing them?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/michaellinenberger.com\/images\/guilt-free-tasks.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"233\" height=\"56\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We tend to write down more tasks than we can do or ever intend to do, and that leads to guilt, and it also leads to your task list losing power due to its ambiguity. There are strategies you can use when you enter a new task to avoid this.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Use a Question Mark.<\/strong> If you are writing down a task but you\u2019re not really sure you\u2019re committed to it, put a question mark at its end. Example: \u201cWrite blog on new Surface Tablet?\u201d The true action here is to ask myself later if this article makes sense; I\u2019m yet not committing to actually writing the article. This is a pretty common situation, where you\u2019re not sure yet whether a task is really needed, but you want to get it recorded so you don\u2019t forget it. If you later decide that the task is <em>not<\/em> worth doing, there\u2019s no guilt in deleting the task. Read more about how to do this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/the-power-of-putting-a-question-mark-on-tasks\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Use a Leading Qualifier.<\/strong> The other strategy you can take is to use a leading qualifier on the task that softens the intention. Here are some examples: In the task \u201cConsider new porch light,\u201d the word <em>Consider<\/em> is useful if you are still deciding whether to buy something\u2014it doesn\u2019t commit you to the actual purchase. In \u201cStudy next steps on vendor contract,\u201d the phrase <em>Study next steps <\/em>is useful because it doesn\u2019t commit you to <em>completing<\/em> the contract, just identifying next steps to move it forward, which is your actual intention.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Advantages<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In all these cases, the advantage is when you see the task on your list you don\u2019t feel guilty about not completing the end product\u2014that was never your intention when you wrote it down. Rather, you can see that you only intended to consider it more or study it more. That way your more committed tasks stand out from these and get the added attention they need\u2014the entire list does not get weakened by ambiguous tasks.<\/p>\n<p>Michael<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 31, 2015 How many tasks are on your list that have been sitting there for a while, and you feel guilty about not completing them? We tend to write down more tasks than we can do or ever intend &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/guilt-free-tasks\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3282,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions\/3282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}