What's the immediate next step
How to unstuck almost anything
Welcome to RemoteThatWorks, a weekly newsletter hand-typed by the Valentina Thörner, the Empress of Remote herself. I talk about product leadership, process design, and people (and their relationships). Proudly non-AI, and proudly all-opinions-my-own. To work with me, find me on MentorCruise. Oh, and subscribe so you don’t miss out on the next post.
“I need to update my address everywhere after moving house.”
Some tasks on your list aren’t actually tasks. They are more like projects. And the bigger that project, the higher the probability for you to postpone it to tomorrow.
You may even be adding it to your to do list, telling a couple of people how this is definitely very high on your priority list.
Three weeks later it continues to be on that list. So you decide that tomorrow, you are really going to look into that topic.
The problem isn’t your lack of prioritization. The problem is the lack of clarity about the next step.
It happensa t work to: updating my address, starting with a LinkedIn presence, creating a knowledge base, refactoring a feature - those are all a combination of different steps that can take anything between 30 min and several days.
As a result, you’ll never start (until the pressure becomes too big to ignore), because you’ll never feel like you have enough time.
That task on your to do list? It’s more than one task
So what would be the very first thing to figure out?
To update my address, I first need to create a list of places that I have to inform. With that list I can then research how to update each os those records.
Having clarity on that very first step makes the subsequenst steps look a lot less daunting. And if I don’t know a specific step? At least I know have a clear question to ask those who can help.
So which “task” on your list can benefit from defining the very first step?
Do you need help with defining that first step? The only way to work with me 1-1 is currently via MentorCruise. Or reply to this email - I’ll definitely read your message and while I can’t promise a personal reply, your question or comment it might spark another newsletter :)