Introduction
There are sometimes small tasks that, for some reason, you just can't bring yourself to do — tasks that keep sitting on your to-do list. You know you have to do them, but somehow you end up prioritizing other things, and they stay there, undone.
The other day, one of those lingering tasks got finished in an unexpected way. The feeling at the time was oddly familiar, so I looked into it afterwards, and I wanted to write a bit about what I noticed.
The task that suddenly got done, 10 minutes before heading out
The other morning, I was working through my routine of planning and organizing my daily task list. On that list was a small task that had been sitting there for several days. The priority was fairly high, it would only take 10–20 minutes, and there was nothing especially difficult about it. But because I'd been busy, I kept saying "tomorrow's fine," and it just kept getting pushed back.
That evening, I had plans to meet up with a friend at my place and head out together. I had set "leave at X:XX" as the departure time. I wasn't really conscious of it, but I'd actually finished getting ready a good while before that, and almost without thinking, I found myself saying, "I've got a solid 10 minutes before I have to leave — let me do that thing now," and I started.
What was interesting was that, at the same time, I caught myself thinking, "I'm not even sure I'll finish in time" — and yet my hands were already moving, and as it turned out, I finished right on time. If I'd had a little more time, I probably wouldn't have started. And if I'd had a little less, I don't think I would have either.
What was actually happening
A task I'd been treating as "do it if I can, otherwise tomorrow" suddenly got done, just because it landed in that 10-minute window right before heading out.
Thinking about it a bit more, I realized: what I'd really done was finish something I had to do by borrowing another plan.
The plan to go out with my friend had nothing to do with that lingering task. But because that plan carved out a defined block of time, the task got done. It wasn't that I summoned up the willpower to tackle the task itself — it was more that I rode the current of another plan, and the task came along with it.
A "relative" of the concept: Habit Stacking
When you think about it this way, this is actually something we already do unconsciously all the time.
We check email on the commute train. We read a book during the commute. We brush our teeth while listening to the news. We routinely take this approach of "attaching a new action to an existing plan or habit."
There's a related concept from behavioral science called "habit stacking." It became widely known through James Clear's Atomic Habits, and the idea is that when you want to build a new habit, you can make it stick more easily by attaching it right after an existing habit. "After I brew my coffee, I take my vitamins." "After I brush my teeth, I learn one English word." You use an existing routine as an anchor. That familiar feeling I'd had, I realized, came from having encountered this concept before in that book.
That said, my experience isn't quite the same thing. What got done was not a habit but a one-off lingering task. Habit stacking, in its original sense, is about layering one recurring habit on top of another recurring habit, which is a bit different from layering a one-off task on top of a one-off plan, as in my case.
But I think the underlying principle is close — close enough that they feel like "relatives." In the sense of "instead of building a deadline or container yourself, you borrow the structure of another plan that's already locked in," both approaches seem to belong to the same family.
Even one-off plans can be borrowed
What felt like a personal discovery this time was: even non-habitual, one-off plans can be used as "anchors" in this way.
Normally, when we try to tackle a lingering task, we try to muster motivation directly, or we set deadlines for ourselves. "I'll do it tomorrow morning." "I'll finish it by evening." But deadlines we set for ourselves are just promises to ourselves, and they turn out to be surprisingly easy to break.
On the other hand, plans like "the time I leave for shopping" or "X o'clock pickup for the kids" are locked in by circumstances outside our control. They can't easily be moved. And because they can't be moved, borrowing them as deadlines can be much more effective than ones we set ourselves.
Whether I can consciously use this to actually push through tasks I'm finding heavy is another question. But at least for me, it feels like a promising idea worth experimenting with going forward.
Closing
When you're sitting on a lingering task, sitting down at your desk and telling yourself "OK, time to do this" surprisingly doesn't work all that well. At least for me — if that worked, the task wouldn't be lingering in the first place.
Instead, take a look at the other plans you already have locked in for the day, and try slotting the task into something like "the 10 minutes before heading out" or "the 20 minutes before meeting someone." A one-off version of habit stacking, where you tuck a lingering task into another plan. That kind of approach, I think, might suit certain kinds of tasks.
This post is also a bit of a note-to-self. If anything in it happens to be useful for your own life or work, I'd be glad.
Thanks for reading!
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