Your plate is full, there is a ton on it, so where do you start?
With the menial garbage? Yeah, go work on that first, go work on the stuff that is cluttering your plate and keeping you away from the good stuff… it’s work that’s on the periphery that is taking up space in your head and slowing you down.
And it’s easy, it makes it look like you are working, but you are really not, you’re hiding – hiding from the work that matters, that will make an impact that will take you to the next stage.
But it’s easy and when you step back it looks like you did a lot, but really, you just worked away at the easy stuff, avoiding the hard stuff.
The thing about easy stuff is that it never goes away, it always finds a way to get back onto your plate, to start taking up space. But the hard stuff, the stuff in the middle, what if doing that first had the bigger impact – it’s riskier, harder, you have to slow down and think – you just can’t do.
But you can plow through it.
Think of your plate as a meal when you were a kid – would you eat all the amazing food first – the steak and fries – only to agonize over the asparagus and broccoli, taking forever to eat it all and leaving the table with that taste in your mouth? That taste of – “I left the hard stuff for the end and this would have been simpler if I did the easy stuff first” – Or would you eat the broccoli first and finish off with the steak or perhaps eat both in tandem?
When I was a kid, I always left my broccoli for the end, but now I’m learning to eat my broccoli first.
Note: Substitute whatever foods you want, sorry I’m not a broccoli lover.