What happens when the too hard basket is full?

People often talk about putting things into the too hard basket, rarely do you hear of anyone who dives into it, fishes out one of the things they know needs doing - and completes the task.

Believe it or not, we've all got a too hard basket. We use this phrase to denote anything and everything we don't know how to deal with at a particular moment in time - or more appropriately - don't want to deal with. Whilst there are some people who are quite happy to stuff theirs until it's overflowing and never move beyond the fact they can't be bothered most of the time, we are not talking about those kinds of people.

To my way of thinking, the too hard basket is just another way to describe "structured procrastination". We know what needs doing and we know what we should be doing, we just decide some things are a little too hard today so we will deliberately do other things. Tomorrow of course, we may quite easily complete today's delayed task - not because it's any easier, but because there are other things we don't want to have to deal with. In other words we swap what's in the too hard basket.

The trick is of course knowing you are doing it.

Today I would like you to find your too hard basket - or if you have more than one, I need you to find them all. Get yourself a nice space where you can spread everything out and grab a notebook and pen, or computer task list, or diary - or whatever I don't care. What I do care about though is this. I need you to be honest with what you are putting off. Write down every task, every goal you started but didn't complete, everything - then you need to work out why. If you do have a visual - as in you have a filing tray filled with things you have not worked through - bills you haven't paid, letters you haven't written etc, then start with the oldest and sort it out. Once you have done that I need you to take a walk around your home and your place of work - again make a note of everything you need to do and haven't dealt with. It may be the leaky sink or the button that fell off your jacket. It may be a project that got stalled because one of the team members was away or had other priorities at the time. Re-visit them all.

And we won't stop there.

Your personal goals also need to be looked at - why are they in your too hard basket?

Work out what you need to do to move things on, it may be a meeting, or a telephone call. It may mean re-allocating money or discarding something that will never work but thought it was a good idea at the time.