I don't know about you, but I know that when I see a large task on my plate, it is easy to push away and come back to later or never. One thing that I find that is helpful is to knock out a few small tasks and then the big one seems smaller.
Take for example my day yesterday. I was having the toughest time staying focused. Then I was tasked with modifying a couple build jobs on Jenkins. They weren't hard tasks, just I am the only one in my group that can do it. Just doing these three tasks made the rest of my day go by much smoother and before I knew it, the large task was being completed and it didn't look menacing.
So now I look at large tasks and break them into a small of task as seems possible. Those that are familiar with Agile, know this is the methodology. Write a story, then create sub-tasks. I find if I take a little extra time to plan my attack, I can finish things much faster in the long run.
I've been known to leave a method unfinished but obvious to finish at the end of the night so I can jump in to a quick win in the morning.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely agree about the smaller tasks that make up a larger task as well. Without that definition of small work units, you can waste hours thrashing on stuff that doesn't really matter.