Two for the price of one.

Today, I’m going to share with you two tips, from my frequent encounters with productivity gurus, that seem to be mutually exclusive.  (Like those old adages that contradict each other.  Great minds think alike.  Fools minds run in the same channel, etc.)

These are To Do list tips.  Productivity proposals.

Here’s the first tip:

Often, we are advised to do some of the simplest things on our task lists first.  The theory is that it gives you a sense of progress.  It’s encouraging.  Crossing things off makes you want to cross more things off.  You feel like you are actually accomplishing something.

For that very reason, one of my friends sometimes retroactively lists tasks she has completed just for the satisfaction of crossing them off.  In this case, they aren’t necessarily simple tasks, but they’re already done!  This is a variation I particularly like because you run no risk of the uncrossed item becoming an incomplete burden.

Remember, this works best if you actualize your list—by which I mean that you have to actually write it down.  Or type it up.  It’s got to exist in a somewhat tangible form—even if the form is the one-step-removed version on your monitor.  It can’t just be in your head, or you can’t cross anything off.  (It’s much less satisfying to just let something fade away out of your memory.  Big red check marks.  Big black lines.  That’s the ticket.)

So, that’s one way to go.  Do the easy stuff first.  Build momentum.  See results.

The second tip is the exact opposite:

Do the hard thing, the thing you’ve been avoiding, the thing that’s hanging over your head like that old sword of Damocles, that’s a lead weight in the pit of your stomach.  Just get it over with—because the energy that comes from being released from that pressure will sweep you through the next several items on the list in no time flat.

Chances are, in fact, that the thing you’ve been avoiding is a thing that will make a much bigger difference than five or six of the easy things.  That’s just one of those unfortunate realities of life.  Most things worth doing are hard.  Most difficult things, when accomplished, move us farther forward than the easy things.  (Broccoli is better for us than potato chips, too—and isn’t that unfair?)

Tackle the hard stuff.  Just do it.  Get ‘er done, as they say.

Which of these methods is the best?

It kind of depends—on how much sleep you had the night before, on how easy the easy stuff is and how hard the hard stuff is, on a lot of things.  I tend toward the first way—doing the easy stuff—because I’m lazy.  And it works in a lot of ways a lot of the time.  But I’ve also, on occasion, leap-frogged forward by forcing myself to deal with big, complicated, difficult tasks.

The most important advice, I guess, is—whether you go the easy route or take the harder path—do something.  Keep moving forward.