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Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.
Some tasks are avoided because nobody has said what they want. Not knowing what good looks like is its own reason to keep walking past something.
An unclear job asks you to do two things at once: work out what it is, then do it. On top of that sits the worry of getting it wrong in a way you…
An avoided task charges you rent even on the days nothing goes wrong. The low hum of hoping nobody asks is part of what it costs.
When we weigh up leaving something undone, we usually count only the visible consequences, the letter that might arrive or the person who might…
A task you dislike needs a time and a place, not a place on the list. Tuesday at ten, at the kitchen table, is a plan. Soon is not.
Left in open competition, the dull job loses to everything more urgent and everything more interesting, every single day, and that is not a fault in…
Put the thing you are avoiding early in the day. Anything you place late gets pushed out by whatever the day turns into.
Early has two advantages at once. It is less likely to be shunted, because the day has not yet piled up behind it, and if it does slip it only slips…
Email is the easiest place to hide. It answers back, it never runs out, and by five o'clock it feels like you worked.
Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.
What makes it such a good stand-in for real work is that the rewards come in small unpredictable bursts and almost none of it asks much of you. Your…