I am recovering from a couple of weeks of COVID madness and trying to get back into my habits, including writing.
To my surprise, I had no idea what to write about. I was effectively blocked.
Thinking about being blocked reminded me of being blocked at work and what I did to get moving.
In management, you are constantly bombarded with information streams that seem equally important.
To tackle the work, we resort to prioritization frameworks, to-do lists, four Ds (do, delete, delegate, delay), and other techniques that give us confidence that we’re working on precious work.
In my experience, prioritizing is where I tend to feel blocked, and the anxiety of not making progress kicks in.
This is where a quick mind hack kicks in to save the day. I add a to-do item called “prioritize work” and mark it as the most essential item on my list.
And just like that, I am now going through all the various items and applying prioritization techniques to ensure I use my time well.
The problem was not seeing the value of prioritizing.
I felt blocked just staring at the amount of work in front of me, and since I feel good about making progress constantly, I incorrectly assumed that prioritizing work wasn’t progress.