Task Management: Prevent Mice from Becoming Elephants

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing how we can work on big oppor­tu­ni­ties, big chal­lenges, impor­tant deci­sions and man­age high pres­sure well — and then the tini­est thing can real­ly stress us out. Like in a car­toon I watched as a child where a mas­sive ele­phant was afraid of a tiny mouse.

Some­times we get a back­log of lit­tle mice – 20, 40 or 100 of them scam­per­ing around our feet. Although there is no real dan­ger and they are minus­cule on the scale of what we deal with, they dis­tract us, weigh us down and make us crabby.

They own you. They show up in your sleep and haunt your days until those mice become as big as elephants.

In my book, I call these Toads: all the annoy­ing lit­tle things that you pro­cras­ti­nate deal­ing with which, once done, free your time and ener­gy for big­ger and bet­ter things (Chap­ter 5 Your Oxy­gen Mask First).

The lit­tle things you pro­cras­ti­nate con­sume far, far more ener­gy than you believe – and that they deserve.

I’ve seen many suc­cess­ful lead­ers – dis­tract­ed by loose ends tan­gling in their brains — tak­en down or reduced to less­er ver­sions of themselves.

As sil­ly as it may sound, some­times we need an extra nudge and a reminder to get these things out of the way — like the CEO I cur­rent­ly work with who has been putting off renew­ing his driver’s license and get­ting a colonoscopy.

Name Your Toads

As part of our Quar­ter­ly plan­ning and goal set­ting process, we ask peo­ple set their top goals for Work, Self and Life and to make a list of their toads in each area because, no mat­ter how hard you push for­ward, they are like elas­tic bands, tied to your ankle and hold­ing you back.

The 5 D’s of Task Management

Here are five stan­dard ways to lick a toad. Choose the one that makes the most sense for the situation:

• Do it. Bite the bul­let immediately.
• Don’t do it. Say ​‘no’ to the per­son who request­ed it, if it’s sim­ply not yours to do.
• Del­e­gate it. Assign an appro­pri­ate person.
• Delete it. Let go of it entire­ly. Decide it’s not going to happen.
• Date it. Com­mit to com­plet­ing it by a spe­cif­ic date some­time down the road. Do not use this as a default. Only apply this when now tru­ly is not the right time to deal with the task.

The fun­ni­est thing? You’ll find that, after think­ing about your toads for days, months or years, deal­ing with them is nev­er as bad — or as time-con­sum­ing — as you thought.

The Chal­lenge

• What are the toads you need to lick this month – the top two in each area of your Work, Self and Life that you think about the most?
• Which of task man­age­ment D’s are you going to apply to those toads?