Merlin - great advice. I just gave essentially the same pep talk to a group of young executives in a leadership program I spoke to about improving productivity and reducing toxicity in the workplace. I suggested they filter on the “Cringe Factor” and commit to making at least one thing they dreaded doing go away each day.

I promised them that in a week they would feel much better about their To Do list. I’ve had a raft of e-mails from attendees thanking me and telling me their stress level has gone way down as a result of breaking these terrible tasks down to their true next action.

I have one…a major project, that’s been sitting like a monkey on my back for over 6 months now. The longer it goes, the more I cringe. And its ridiculous, really, but every time I go near doing it, even the little next action, I just freeze up and turn off. The worst part about it is that I really like doing it…but now that I am thinking about it, perhaps I’m frozen on it because there is another task that isn’t nearly so urgent that is still dependent on it—and that’s the one that really frightens me. Silly silly all of it—because if I just did both tasks, they would and I would succeed. And I suppose therein lies the fear. Amazing how neurotic the human mind can become…being afraid of success, jeesh.

Thanks for the great reminder. I think I need to make an entire week a CRINGE week. ;-)

I find that the things with the highest cringe factor for me are the things that have been languishing the longest, and therefore often the ones I most desperately need to knock off the list.

It’s been forever since I’ve read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but isn’t this sort of like what he refers to as a “gumption trap?”

Good advice, whatever name you give it. Now if I can just make myself follow through and get these things done!

I keep a to-do list that gets rewritten every week. Undone items are brought forward in the order of their age, so they make their way up to the top of the list. (I “star” the most important and vital ones, old and new.) Eventually the shame of something lingering on my list for several weeks gets to me (and I get tired of having to bring it forward each week) and I take care of it, and at least once a week I commit myself to removing the top/oldest item on my to-do list, if not the top/oldest five.

this is such good advice. I started doing this about 3 months ago, and its really helped me get through the stumbling blocks - the “cringes”. Often, when too many “cringes” build up, I really feel trapped by what is on my TODO list and I just cant get it out of my head.

Once again, great advice. Keep up this site, I love it.

Ironically enough I cringe at the thought of doing this. Maybe it means I should.

Thanks for this, Merlin.

As I wind up my six month experiment in analog-only organization, one of my main complaints with using index-cards as an action (as opposed to project) management tool is that it’s far too easy to hide the cringe items from yourself. Just drop another card on top, and bingo!

It’s a poisonous habit that lets you feel better about yourself than you deserve. Sort of the absolute inverse of a good lifehack, which after all is supposed to make you deserve to feel better.

Nice approach. Not including those relegated to the S/M list, I have this one: Finish Steve Hagen’s book ‘Buddhism - plain and simple’. This may have something to do with me being buried in other books all the time or, more likely, ‘plain and simple’ is not doing it for me :-)

There is another option besides a) make the loathsome task less cringe-worthy, or b) just get the damned thing done:

c) never do it!

If this cringe-worthy task has been on your to-do list for a long time AND you have are still alive, maybe you never really NEEDED to do this task? This solution is the fastest, too! <:)

I’m going to have a real go at this. There’s some decidedly cringeworthy todos lurking in the recesses of my todolist at the moment. The problem is that I get easily distracted by the more interesting todos, and the fairly boring ones lurk around until they blow up my face.