From Drawing a Blank to Taking Action
One of the most common reasons people put off doing an important task is that they’re not sure how to do it. Sometimes they’re not even sure exactly what they should be doing — they just know they’re supposed to somehow end up with a finished product.
At a recent coworking session, T Carter knew she needed to work on marketing her services. She recently left the corporate world to open her own boutique graphic design business, Design Breakfast.
Confusion breeds procrastination
It was no surprise to me that T was using the coworking session to write marketing content. When you own a small business, there are an infinite number of things you could do for it, and a lot of them are more straightforward than writing content. Writing content is so important, but what kind of content should you write? About what? For whom? It’s so much easier to fiddle with the colors of your website — even if nobody sees your website because you don’t write any marketing content.
This doesn’t just apply to business owners, though. In general, confusion breeds procrastination. The tasks we’re fuzzy on are the ones that need the most attention, but they tend to get the least.
The “Dunno” Dump
I had noticed how much confusion was a cause of procrastination, so I had prepared an excise for that coworking session that I call the “Dunno” Dump. It’s where you brain-dump everything you don’t know about your task.
This is different from what most people would tell you to do: “break it down into smaller pieces.” You can only do that when you know what the gosh-darn thing is! Sometimes trying to break it down forces you to get clear on it in your mind, but other times it just feels impossible.
So I suggest you start with brutal honesty. In my experience, the best productivity breakthroughs happen when you stop trying to sweep things under the rug — things like the fact that you’re not really sure what kind of content to write for which platforms how often.
How to do it
Get a piece of paper or a digital document, and just start writing down all the things you don’t know about this task.
They’ll probably start out vague, like “I don’t know where to start” or “I don’t know how to do this.”
As you keep going, you might be able to describe in more detail just exactly what you don’t know, like “I don’t know whether to prioritize A or B,” or “I don’t know if my usual approach will work on a problem of this size.”
The goal is to keep writing, keep probing what you don’t know, until you get enough clarity about what you don’t know to formulate questions.
The secret is: you don’t have to have answers to get started
Sometimes, writing down questions is enough to make you realize the answers. But it’s not a failure if that doesn’t happen. Finding good questions is actually a fantastic way to begin a hard task. You can take those questions to a colleague, enter them into a search engine, or ponder them in the shower. Congratulations: you’re making progress!
Through this exercise, T realized that she needed a content marketing strategy before she started making content. So she spent the coworking time developing a plan, which should make it a lot easier to write the content in the future!
Try it yourself!
I made a journaling template that will walk you through the “Dunno” Dump, so you can do it even when your brain is fried. Next time you’re stuck and feel like the task in front of you is a big fuzzy blank, fill it out (you can print it or type right in it) to go from WTF to actionable next steps. It comes with your subscription to my newsletter, which will bring you more helpful stuff like this: