When you can’t make yourself start 🧠

Most tasks feel impossible because you're holding the whole thing in your head at once. This forces it down to one move.

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Here's what I have to do: [task]. Break it into the smallest possible first step, something I could finish in under five minutes. Just one step. Don't give me the full plan, don't give me a list, and don't tell me it'll be fine once I get going. One step.

Some days the answer isn't the important task, it's the one you can actually do right now.

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I have about [20] minutes and honestly not much energy. Here's my list: [paste]. Tell me the one thing to do right now that fits what I've actually got, not what I should be doing. If the honest answer is that nothing on the list fits, say that and tell me what to do instead.

Sometimes you can't start because you can't articulate the thing. Don't try to write it all out. Get interviewed instead.

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I need to do something and I can't get it straight in my head. Ask me one question at a time, waiting for each answer, until you understand what I'm actually trying to do. Don't give advice yet. When you've got it, tell it back to me in three sentences.

Lists get written in the order things occurred to you, which is almost never the order they should be done in.

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Here's my to-do list: [paste]. Rewrite it in the order I should actually do things, taking into account what blocks what and what's quick. Put one genuinely easy thing first so I get moving. Mark anything that doesn't need doing at all.

This one sounds too simple to work. It works anyway.

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I've been avoiding [task] for about a week now and I don't fully know why. Ask me two questions to work out what's actually stopping me. Then talk me into doing ten minutes of it, not the whole thing, ten minutes. No pep talk, no motivational language, just make the ten minutes sound manageable.