Divide and Conquer

Divide and conquer may work with monkeys, too.

It's the oldest trick in the book for overcoming procrastination: take a really hard task and break it into much smaller, more manageable tasks.  Why don't we all do it, all the time then?  Well, we are procrastinators, right? Why shouldn't we procrastinate on breaking-really-hard-tasks-into-more-manageable-tasks too?  I mean, it's a task...

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to the problem.  For whatever reason, the act of breaking up complex tasks into simpler ones is often not fun at all.  But that doesn't change the fact that if you can just get past that initial barrier and force yourself to do it, all the subsequent steps will be much, much easier.

So, that's today's Daily Mind Game.  Your mission is to take some complex, nasty project-task frankenstein and break that monster up into as many tiny little pieces as is humanly possible.  This is your challenge.  It's all you have to do for your metacognitive training today.  Don't wuss out!

Divide and Conquer

Task: Divide a massive task or project into as many simple subtasks as possible and complete one.

Info: Remember yesterday's DMG "Too Easy"?  The goals was to complete a single, stupidly easy task.  Your job today is to take a massive project and try to break it up into as many "Too Easy" tasks as possible.  Don't be shy: brainstorm the heck out of how you might subdivide this task. Go crazy, don't be embarrassed if the tasks get to the level of "Lick stamp and place on envelope."  The point is to create a list of tasks that are so easy you've turned an impossible project into a series of tasks that will get done organically.  Have fun with it!

Goal: Create a list of at least 20 subtasks for a single project or mega-task.

If you're like me, you're going to want to procrastinate on this too.  Don't give in!  Promise yourself you'll do this at the very least today.  It will make future work so much easier.