What to do when you don’t know where to start

This post started life as an episode of my podcast, Unfrazzle. If you prefer, listen here (5mins).

Procrastination and prioritisation.

In my mind, the two are connected: when we’re not clear on our priorities, procrastination often follows.

Of course, it’s one thing to be told, “you just need to get your priorities straight”, but quite another to know where to start.

And if you’re not wired for structure and your brain doesn’t naturally lean into logic and order, you’re probably going to need a little help.

(Quick aside, if that’s you, don’t worry – there’s nothing wrong with you! We’re all different. Taking the chaos and putting it into some sort of order comes easily to me, but there are plenty of things that creative people find easy that I’m absolutely useless at. We’re all different, and that’s what makes life interesting, isn’t it?)

Sometimes procrastination can be a good thing – it can give an idea room to breathe and percolate, and sometimes that’s helpful.

But what do you do in those moments when you’re stuck faffing about and doing nothing very much because there’s loads of things you could be doing and you’re not sure where to start?

Well, you need to decide what’s important and just start there!

Simple!

Simple? Yes. Easy? No.

Because when you’re overwhelmed and have a long list of things to do (perhaps you’ve done a brain dump to get it all out of your head), it can be hard to look dispassionately at that list and make choices about what needs to happen now and what can wait.

When you’re stressed or under pressure, the easy tasks and the urgent tasks are often the most appealing. The easy tasks require the least investment of our depleted energy, and the urgent tasks will stop screaming for our attention once we get them out of the way.

But the easy and the urgent aren’t necessarily the most important. Focusing on them can really slow your progress and leave you feeling frustrated and exhausted.

What you need is a fool-proof, easy-peasy way of figuring out what’s most important.

So today I’m doing something I don’t usually do, and sharing a tool that will help you do just that.

It’s called The Procrastination Buster, and it’ll help you decide which task is most important in a matter of minutes. Once you have clarity around that, you can stop procrastinating and just get started. Starting is often the most difficult bit, so using the Procrastination Buster can be a real game-changer!

I can’t claim the credit for this resource – it was created by Gillian Jones and Ro Gorell – but as soon as I saw it, I could see how helpful it is and started sharing it with clients.

Head here to download your free copy.

Whether you use this tool every day to keep you on track, or save it for emergencies (or, as one of my mentoring clients once put it, “for when there’s a fire and you need a hose”), once you’re clear on what’s most important, you can stop wasting time on the things that aren’t.

The result? Less faffing, more progress, less stress and more ease. I hope that this helps, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.