Have you noticed that BIG tasks tend to hang around in your To Do list for much longer than they should?  Not because they're particularly hard to get done but because they usually require several steps to complete and demand more. As a result we unconsciously put these off and they end up sitting in our To Do list and hang over our head for weeks.  Sometimes we never get around to doing them.

On the other hand, small tasks are very quick to come off our To Do list. We get to these quickly because they require only a small amount of time.  Finding an open timeslot for these tasks is easy so we finish them quickly to get that good feeling of completing an item from our constantly growing To Do list.

The challenge is that when we add tasks to our To Do list, we don't naturally create simple tasks.  We remember that something needs to get done and quickly jot it down before we forget such as "Book summer vacation" or "Write research paper."  Not much thought is put into how many steps are required to complete the task.  A task may initially sound simple but may actually be masking several smaller tasks.  For example, before writing the research paper, several steps may need to be done: (1) Identify a research topic, (2) Do literature research, and (3) write multiple drafts.

The solution is to avoid "big" tasks. How? By breaking these BIG tasks into smaller more manageable tasks.  That way, you can easily start making progress towards completing the BIG task.

If a task has been sitting in your To Do list for more than a week, consider whether it needs to be broken down into several smaller tasks.  Take on big tasks one step at a time.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

- Chinese Proverb

For these BIG tasks that require more than one step to complete, consider using the Projects feature within Quasitime Planner which allows you to easily group smaller related tasks together.