Episode 9: There’s No Such Thing As A Tiny Task

Good morning, y’all! Welcome to today’s podcast which is all about a topic I feel really, really strongly about, and that is this: there is no such thing as a tiny task.

One of the things that I have noticed working with clients in Alliance Coaching, with their time management and productivity, over the past year is that a lot of us tend to minimize ourselves or beat ourselves up because something that is, quote-unquote,” tiny” is really difficult to do.

So, we look at tasks, and we give ourselves these arbitrary measurements of how big or small these tasks are. So, something like scheduling an appointment might be, quote, “tiny,” and something like a big project might be, quote, “large.” What I want to remind you is that all of that is a judgment. It is an arbitrary categorization that your brain is making up, and it means nothing about the difficulty of a particular task. Difficulty of a task is determined by a lot of things. It’s determined by your skills. It’s determined by the environment and circumstances that you’re in. It’s determined by your previous experience with that task. It’s determined by your mindset surrounding that task. And so, what I want you to do today is I want you to stop telling yourself that something is tiny, or something is so small that it shouldn’t, quote, “be a problem for you.”

As always, I’m gonna tell a story. Last week, I had two tasks on my to-do list that were left for the week. One of them was scheduling a dentist appointment. The other one was making six weeks’ worth of Instagram reels. If I were to use an arbitrary judgment, I would say that scheduling the dentist appointment is a tiny, simple task, and doing the six weeks of content is a large task that’s going to take a long time. However, I was having massive resistance towards the dentist appointment. It had been put off on my to-do list for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, versus, I was very easily willing to jump right into the six weeks of content creation, and that is because the six weeks of content creation was totally familiar to me. I do that every single six weeks. It’s something that I’ve been doing frequently for two years. I know exactly how the task is gonna go, I know exactly what parts are incorporated in it, and even though it can be a little intimidating, I generally have fun doing it.

The dentist, on the other hand, is not something I have fun doing. It was filled with unknowns. I had to figure out where I was gonna go to the dentist since I haven’t been since we’ve lived in DC. I had to call or schedule an appointment and probably fill out a bunch of forms. I had to convince myself to actually go to the dentist which is something that I had a lot of drama and shame around because I haven’t been to the dentist in about two years. Yeah, don’t judge me. Highly don’t recommend that.

So, in my mind, this, quote, “tiny task” of calling the dentist (or finding a dentist) was actually way, way, way harder for me than doing this six weeks of content I needed to do.

What the takeaway here is for you today is that we all need to let go of our judgment of ourselves as to why certain things are hard. We tell ourselves, “Oh, this should be hard,” or, “This shouldn’t be hard,” but instead, if something feels difficult, if you are avoiding a task over and over and over again, I encourage you to get curious and ask yourself, “Why is this difficult for me? What is the obstacle here?”

Going back to previous episodes, what is the easiest way that I can get the result I want? Hopefully, this reduces some of your judgment around yourself and reminds you that there is no such thing as a tiny task. I can tell you after working with over 100 clients in the last year within Alliance Coaching — and I’m sure all of my coaches will agree — that time management and productivity are a direct result of us reducing our judgment and our self-criticism around specific tasks, how hard they are for us, and how much we struggle with those particular skills.

So, take a deep breath, release some of that judgment today, and, as always, if you need help, Alliance Coaching is here for you.

That’s what I’ve got! Have a wonderful day, my friends!