The Simplest Way to Stop Spending all your time on the Easy” tasks and actually Get Stuff Done!

Me and prioritisation have not always been friends! Maybe you know this pattern… You brain dump all your tasks onto a list. You get ready to do the list. The list looks very long and overwhelming so you start with something easy. You decide to continue doing the easy things to blast a few things off your list in order to make it less overwhelming. Those “easy things” take ages. You don’t get the big things done. They remain on your list for days/ weeks.
Introducing: The Burner Method (from Jake Knapp).
Ok, so imagine yourself as a chef with something cooking on the front burner (front hob of the cooker), some pasta on the back burner that you stir every so often, and with dishes to be washed in the kitchen sink.
You need to think of your tasks using this chef’s mindset. You choose 1 project to have on the front hob- this gets most of your attention. You choose one project for the back burner which gets less attention. You dump all other tasks into the kitchen sink in no particular order.
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As a chef (self-employed business owner), you need to cook the food. The dishes ofcourse need to get washed, and they will. This method can visually help you see where your attention needs to be. And all you need is a pen and paper divided into 3 sections
A word of warning…. It’s super annoying to have such a small kitchen sink. Honestly, it’s so tempting to use some of the beautiful empty space available below project 1 to jot more sink tasks, but NO! It’s intentionally like that. Your brain needs to see that project 1 has more space, and so it’s more important. You’ve been warned! Resist the temptation!
The idea is to “burn” through the list every few days and rewrite it. This is part of the process, because what you’ll notice is that some items that have been in the sink for a few days, will lose their importance and won’t make it onto the next iteration- because it mustn’t be a main priority after all.
Have you used this method? Does it sound like you might like to use it? Comment below and let’s have a conversation to start winning at prioritisation!