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Easily Kill Procrastination With the Single Task To-Do List

Having a long list of tasks to complete can be overwhelming. When we’re overwhelmed, we tend to procrastinate to avoid that uncomfortable feeling. By only having one small task on your list at a time, you can focus and make progress.

Edward John
4 min readNov 2, 2022
Image by upklyak on Freepik

The problem with to-do lists and big tasks

A recent newsletter email from Oliver Burkeman gave me an “ah-ha” moment. It was about to-do lists and how they aren’t necessarily the best approach to productivity.

To-do lists are supposed to help us get things done and make us more productive. But sometimes, they can make us feel overwhelmed. By listing everything we need to get done, the totality of it all can feel like it’s too much.

Large projects can feel so big we don’t know where to start. Breaking them down into small subtasks is common advice. Sure, this can be very helpful for understanding everything that needs to be done and ensuring you don’t miss anything.

But it can still be a problem if you view each task as part of the larger whole. This can cause you to procrastinate because you know that starting the first task is…

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Edward John
Edward John

Written by Edward John

Sometimes my inside is full of sunshine 🌞 edwardjohnwritesATgmailDOTcom

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