Getting Some Relief With the One-Task Challenge
Are you ready for a challenge? With the busy fall season approaching, I’ve been thinking a lot about what holds my clients back from following through on their plans. I can’t help but think of the #1 most common problem that my clients express to me:
“Monica, I end each day feeling like I didn’t get anything done. I don’t even know where the time went, and it’s so frustrating.”
So this week, I want to invite you into a little game—a challenge of sorts—to get you thinking differently about your days and about getting things done.
I call this the One-Task Challenge, and I actually live by it. I use it all the time for myself, and it’s very simple: you wake up in the morning and commit to one task that you will get done that day.
Now, that one task doesn’t actually have to be one singular thing. For example, today, my one task was writing three newsletter articles, which is more of a general task.
Your one task could be writing one chapter of your book or it could be writing two chapters of your book. It could be shooting one video or it could be shooting 12 videos.
It could be a combination of things, like shooting one video and finishing a slideshow that you’ve been working on.
The challenge is that you have to get your one thing done by midnight or before you go to bed that day.
We all know the feeling of having that one task that we continually resist, avoid, or procrastinate. It becomes a source of fear, anxiety, and shame. Even if we do 10 other things that are really important to our business, if we don’t get that one thing done, we feel dissatisfied.
So if we flip the script and define the one task that we want to complete—the most important one—then, even if we only get that one thing done, chances are we’re going to be happy. We’ll probably also be happier about the fact that we’ve gotten 10 other things done.
You may get to four o’clock and not get it done. You may get to six o’clock and not get it done.
But what matters is that you have the willpower and the discipline to sit your butt down at seven o’clock or eight o’clock, after dinner or after the kids are in bed, and do it.
When you do finally get it done, even if it’s nine o’clock at night, at midnight, or right before you go to bed, you’re going to feel that sense of achievement. You’re going to know what it feels like to get that one thing done.
And, frankly, it doesn’t really matter what time of day you did it. All that really matters is that you got it done.
From there, you start to build the mental muscle memory of getting something done, of knowing that you can count on yourself to get that one thing done. You’ll start to trust your ability to get it done.
And after a while, because you know you’re going to get it done, you no longer have to fight yourself to do it at ten o’clock at night. It becomes easier and easier for you to do it at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning or whenever you’ve planned to get it done.
So my invitation to you this week is to try the One-Task Challenge for seven days. Pick one task each day and get it done before you go to bed. That’s it.
Don’t worry about the other 10 things. Don’t worry about your entire to-do list. Just try the One-Task Challenge, and let me know how it goes.
If you’re looking for support in keeping track of all of those other tasks, goals, and plans, I invite you to join us live at our next Breakthrough Planner Day on September 14.
On Planner Days, we come together virtually to walk through how to make the most out of my Breakthrough Planner and plan our next 90 days.
Here’s to that sweet, sweet sense of achievement!
