Why You Should Stop Procrastinating on Small Tasks

We all from time to time run into tasks that we don’t attend to promptly.

It’s ironic how human psychology works, but people tend to procrastinate on smaller tasks rather than bigger tasks. However, minor tasks, when tossed aside, can eventually blow up into big tasks.

Too often, tasks that only take 5 minutes of your time may end up on the back burner. These can range from making a short phone call or sending an e-mail or scheduling an appointment.

It’s one thing when you procrastinate on big tasks — those that require a lot of mental effort and decision-making. But small tasks?

Small tasks are a wolf in disguise

While seemingly innocent at a first glance, they can become giant monsters sucking up all your energy and resources. And the sad part is that we usually procrastinate doing them while being consciously aware of them. It means that we make a conscious choice to avoid doing them.

But here is the thing: Any time you procrastinate on anything — be it a small task, a medium task, or a large task — you’re actually increasing your workload.

The reason is the little tasks, whether you realize it or not, will eventually balloon into giant tasks requiring much more time and energy to complete. Task after task set aside will build up incrementally and explode and you wind up with a massive workload.

So while in the beginning in our minds we thought it was rational to put them off, since we reasoned It’s just a small task we can do anytime we experience doing it differently than we initially thought. After all, it’s not as easy as we thought it would be.

Just because a task is minor and doesn’t have a deadline, it doesn’t mean it isn’t important. And so many times it’s the reason we let them slip through the cracks. We toss them aside and even forget that they exist. And guess what? Once they become monstrous tasks, we look back in time and realize how we should’ve acted upon them at the right time.

So putting off minor tasks, in reality, will not do us any good, but only hurt us.

Change how you think about small tasks

Lately, I’ve realized that when I attend to tiny tasks in a timely fashion, I can get them out of the way faster. The reason being is why procrastinate on something when I know it isn’t serving me well?

I remind myself that eliminating them on time would help me avoid the dreaded task overload where I have to deal with many of them at once.

Chronic procrastination can lead to stress and anxiety. Did you know that chronic procrastinators feel more stressed and get poor sleep?

Unfinished projects and broken commitments can also harm your personal relationships.

If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you juggle too many things and your mind is going in many different directions. One is you become overly critical of yourself, which in turn makes you procrastinate even more. By procrastinating on tasks, you put your mind in worry mode and the vicious cycle begins.

You start to wonder why you don’t seem to complete a seemingly minor task. This makes you turn all the negative feelings towards yourself, which hampers your ability to think rationally.

Your mind is trapped in a web of uncertainty and fear.

But the good news is, there is a way out. To break that cycle, you should stop being so judgmental and allow some flexibility. Give yourself permission not to be perfect and accept whatever the outcome will be.

Start to become more consciously aware when you procrastinate. Don’t let small tasks pile up in the first place. Whenever possible, attend to small tasks promptly, and treat them in the same order of importance as bigger tasks.

The takeaway

Small tasks are a wolf in disguise. Too often, people will procrastinate doing them and realize later they have more work to do. To avoid that, treat small tasks in the same way you approach bigger tasks. No matter how small they are, attending to them sooner than later will help you avoid work overload in the future.