Beat Procrastination and Overwhelm with Laughably-Small Tasks

In order to create the largest music distribution company in the world, you start by opening your trunk.

At least that’s what Derek Sivers did, selling his own CDs out of his car at every gig he performed. After selling 1,500 copies, Sivers realized that he had the potential to reach a much wider audience by using the internet. In 1998, he built his idea as a simple webpage with a shopping cart that emailed him a buyer’s address every time an order was placed. He called it a name you may recognize – CD Baby.

Back then, Sivers intentionally started small. The website sold only his CDs, and he mailed out each one himself. Over time, he began selling his friend’s music, too. As demand and popularity grew, so did his company. Eventually, success lead to a personal meeting with Steve Jobs – where Jobs convinced Sivers to turn his beloved online music store into the first distribution company for iTunes, exploding CD Baby to the massive company it is today.

Every day, we are confronted with big, mentally overwhelming goals and tasks that encourage us to procrastinate. To defeat this, we can Sivers’ take example of starting small and shrink it even further – starting laughably-small.

Laughably-small tasks are so miniscule that you’d laugh at the thought of procrastinating them.

On your task list right now you might have “update demo reel” or “create that monster sound”. These are not laughably-small, and if you harbor any small amount of mental resistance to these tasks, you’ll put them off.

Converting these tasks to be laughably-small would cause them to look like “Open laptop”, “Turn on Computer”, or “Double click the DAW icon”. As silly as it sounds, for this to work you need to set your bar of success at simply completing your first laughably small task. So, if you’ve opened your laptop and you don’t feel like doing anything else, great – you’re done for the day!

…except 99% of the time you won’t feel that way at all.

Laughably-small tasks are built to get you started.

Getting started is your actual problem. If you’re exhausted, you don’t have enough energy, or you’re ill – you’ll know it. Otherwise it’s simply a matter of getting over the initial hurdle to defeat procrastination. That’s what laughably-small tasks are tailor-made for.

Defining your day’s success at “Open Laptop” gives you a goal that you’re guaranteed to reach. Once you complete that goal, one of two magical things happens:

You realize you are legitimately not feelin well and shouldn’t work
You realize you’ve sat in your work place and opened your computer, so you might as well work

As I said, 99% of the time, you’ll encounter the latter. For the rest of the time, this laughably-small task still gives you a bit of momentum and also an out for the days you’re not feeling well.

Start by breaking down your goal into its smallest possible actions.

Your “Update Demo Reel” goal for example, may have tasks like:

Open Laptop
Turn on Laptop
Double click my DAW
Save Project As
Load in video capture
Create track

…and so on.

None of these tasks individually are too much to handle, and you’re free to complete one or many of these in one sitting. The only requirement is that you’ve “succeeded” so long as you complete that very first task.

You don’t need to break down every single microscopic task on the way to completing your goal, either – just as many as you need to clearly have a path to get past your initial mental resistance.

Laughably-small tasks don’t conserve your energy.

Laughably-small tasks do indeed allow you to take down mountainous goals easily – but they don’t prevent burnout. If you want to have the energy to get up every day and keep your momentum up, you need to combine laughably-small tasks with remarkably-short finish lines.

Once you open that laptop of yours and get going, you’re likely to run into a “flow” state where you’ll want to finish your entire demo reel in one sitting. Don’t – this is antithetical to the laughably-small task.

If you can give yourself a remarkably-short finish line – like finishing the very first scene – you’ll end your day without reaching exhaustion and then be able to jump back in tomorrow with more energy and creative awareness than you would normally have.

“But Adam!” you say, “How can I call my day a “success” when I’ve hardly done anything?!”

This one’s easy. You accomplished more action towards completing your goal than you would have otherwise just thinking and fretting about it, right?

So, explain to me how that’s not success? 🙂

Okay, so how do laughably-small tasks work again?

Write down your initial goal as you see it – like “Update Demo Reel”
Break that down into it’s smallest possible actions – like “Open Laptop”
Get started!
Make sure you pick a remarkably-short finish line to stop at before you get too exhausted

Starting small is ideal.

You probably won’t end your day having created the world’s largest music distribution service – but every laughably-small step you take will undoubtedly get you closer towards goals you initially thought were impossible.

If you want more.

Derek Sivers has a great YouTube channel – I’d suggest starting with a playlist he recorded almost a decade ago called “Uncommon Sense”. It encapsulates the ideas I’ve talked about here and much more.

And I’ll be back on Twitch this week, on Saturday, August 29th at 2pm. You’re welcome to come hang out as I continue working on audio plugin development.