Making progress on big projects is hard, especially if you have a busy life with multiple responsibilities.
For someone like me who is constantly doing lots of things, I sometimes veer off the path and need to do course correcting.
I’ve tested many frameworks in my life to help me, I practice daily introspection and I have a review wall, among other techniques. Most of us live our lives on autopilot. If we want to improve our lives, one of the best things we can do is to train certain habits into ourselves. I like to put things into frameworks that I can memorize. The more I can put things into frameworks, the easier it is for me to stay on course.
One area that has helped me immensely in my life is practicing “conquering the frog daily”. Humans constantly procrastinate, especially at things we are afraid of, bad at, or dislike. And so instead we will focus on working on the areas that come to us more naturally and easily. This can send us down the wrong path because often the things we avoid are the very things we need to focus on to make it to the next level of whatever we are working on.
My version of dealing with my frog every day is to do an introspection session where I list out for a particular project what are the big items to move the needle, what are the areas I know I need to work on, but I am afraid of/worried of/dislike/etc. I write it out in as much detail as I can so I can introspect myself and to tease out the truth. I then list out those frog tasks or areas, and I make sure to work on them every day as my first task. I don’t allow myself to do other more fun or easier tasks first because I know that I will often get sucked into those tasks. I want my early mental energy to be focused on important tasks. Another thing I usually do is at the end of the day, I list out the main frog that I would like to work on for tomorrow. This is a form of introspection that I practice at the end of the day.
Its important to do this everyday and after you complete the task, you must savor in it, bring it into your consciousness that you “completed this important item you were procrastinating on”. After a while, you will get used to working on important things and it will become rote. You may even start to enjoy the things that were hard for you before.