How to deal with incomplete tasks

- Occasionally, people go through my time management course, Time Management Fundamentals here on the library, and they follow the instructions I give about gathering items, about processing items, about putting them on their calendar. But when the time arrives to do something about that thing that they've scheduled, it just doesn't get done. This might happen because you underestimated how long something should take, or perhaps something unexpected happened that got in the way. Or perhaps you just don't have the motivation to follow through when that moment arrives.

Before we explore what to do with incomplete tasks, let's first discuss how to prevent them from happening. Imagine giving a person a bucket and telling them to empty a lake. If they begin attempting to empty the lake a bucket at a time without first damming the stream leading into the lake, then they'll be doomed to repeat themselves over and over and over again. In the same way, it's vital that we first resolve the source of the problem rather than getting better at dealing with the problem itself.

So if you aren't completing appointments on your calendar because you're underestimating how long something takes, then get in the habit of overestimating everything. For example, if you say that something takes an hour and discover that it takes an hour and a half, get in the habit, when you first schedule a task, to schedule twice as much time. So schedule two hours for a task you think will take one hour. This overestimation is surprisingly a healthy thing.

It gives you more room to breathe, more room to deal with inevitable interruptions that are going to happen. It also gives you the added bonus of being more focused in your day. The most successful people I know try to accomplish only a few things in their day. If you attempt to complete 10 or more tasks within the same day, you're decreasing your odds of success. Overestimating also helps with the second obstacle, when interruptions occur and get in the way.

The extra time gives you room to respond to emergencies and then still return to the scheduled project and complete it in time. Additionally, if you find yourself getting constantly interrupted, I recommend checking out my course here in the library, Improving Your Focus. It will help you build systems and structure in your day to reduce interruptions. But what if your problem isn't systems-related, it's motivation-related? Recently a coaching client of mine talked about how he kept putting off a large project because it would take him too long to complete.

If that's your challenge, then get in the habit of scheduling the first minute of activity on your calendar. In other words, if I tell myself that I need to create a 20-page financial report, which is going to be overwhelming for pretty much anyone, then when I schedule that on my calendar, I also want to put a note about what is the first minute that I'm going to do. And the first minute of creating that report is opening my word processor and creating the file.

It makes it easier for your mind to emotionally deal with the amount of work you're asking it to do. If you follow these suggestions, odds are you're going to find that the frequency of incomplete tasks is going to dramatically decrease. But what if you follow all those steps, and you've still got incomplete tasks? It happens to the most prepared of us, myself included. The good news is the solution is simple. Put incomplete tasks back into a gathering point to reprocess.

If you've been through Time Management Fundamentals, you'll remember the part where we gathered everything into the baskets before we started to process them. We want to do the same thing with incomplete tasks. Put any incomplete task or project back into the in box, and reprocess it. However, this time, process it with keeping in mind the suggestions of overestimating, protecting your focus, and scheduling just the first minute of activity.

Do this, and the odds are you're going to find it much easier to follow through and complete every task that's in front of you.