Being a Rogue Magical PM for Hire (why didn’t I put this on my business cards?!) means that I’m not exactly a productivity guru, but I am “productivity adjacent.” After all, a big part of PMPM is getting things done in order to meet your goals. But I have some issues with the way productivity is frequently presented, and one of the biggest is this idea that if you aren’t doing something, you must not really want to do it (AKA if it was really important, you’d prioritize it). I hear this over and over, both directly (from people who like to think of themselves as productive and want to rub your nose in it) and indirectly (from productivity systems where if you have something lingering on your todo list, you should just dump it).

In the real world things aren’t that simple.

Of course there are tasks we log, but that we don’t really want or need to do. Sure, go ahead and scratch them off. But there’s plenty of stuff that we desperately want or need to do, but that we just aren’t getting done. Here are three reasons this might be the case, and more importantly… what to do about it.

Reason 1.  It’s a Habit
I think lots of people are aware that smoking is pretty bad. It’s expensive, brutal on your health, ruins your looks, and smells nasty. Plus since society generally agrees, there are many places — especially in the US — where you can’t smoke anymore. Of the people who do smoke most of them want to quit. It’s kind of petty to suggest that if they really wanted to they’d prioritize it. In fact, smoking is addictive and a very hard habit to break.

There are lots of things we do that are habits, most not as serious as smoking. In fact, a huge amount of our day to day lives run off our habits and aren’t conscious at all. Ever find that you got home from work without really having thought about it? Like you pull into your driveway and the last thing you remember is leaving the office? Ever need to run an after work errand and then only remember as you pull up to your house? That’s habit.

Or let’s say you decided to add 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation to your bedtime routine. You think you’ll sleep better and you know it’s a very positive activity. You really want to do it. Any yet, night after night, you find yourself in bed, having forgotten completely to meditate until it’s too late and you’re falling asleep. That’s because your entire nighttime routine is one big habit.

Breaking or changing a habit isn’t just a matter of deciding it’s a priority. It’s a process of hacking into a running loop of brain code in order to either swap out something or insert something new. That means:

• Breaking yourself out of your habit trance at a critical time. Maybe you put a note on the coffee pot in the morning that reminds you to meditate at night when you set the coffee timer for the next morning. Maybe you set a location alarm on your smart phone so that it goes off when you pass the pharmacy on your way home. Maybe you change up your entire routine or process — this gives you a chance to build brand new habits (and is kind of fun too). When we had only a tiny dog, we rarely walked him. Frankly, he was so small that he’d get all his exercise racing around the living room. But then we got a second, bigger, dog. That changed up all our habits and now they both get two walks a day.
• Swapping out the middle part of the habit (the payoff) for something that gives you a similar reward. If you crave an unhealthy snack at bedtime, don’t try to force yourself not to eat. Recognize that the trigger of setting the dishwasher at the end of the day ends with the reward of a comforting full belly when you lie down. And then just swap out the ice cream for nuts or almond milk or something less offensive.
• Enlist help. Get a family member to remind you at the critical moment that you wanted to do this different or extra thing. Make sure you aren’t too hard on them when they do. If you can do things together, that’s even better (exercise buddies anyone?).
• Limit the places you are allowed to get triggered. In my early to mid-20s I was a pack-a-day smoker. At this point, I haven’t had a cigarette (or tobacco vape thingy) for over two decades. How did I do it?  I (or rather we, see previous point) decided we wouldn’t smoke in the house during a cold winter. This was helped by a major session of cleaning and deodorizing. Then the cars became off limits. Then I stopped taking breaks at work (or rather I took them and gossiped and snacked instead). And then no smoking after work. Finally, we stopped smoking while drinking with friends on the weekend. At that point, I was already a nonsmoker in my head. It took like a year and it wasn’t easy, but it did work — for both of us.

The gold standard for this stuff is The Power of Habit, which I highly recommend.

Reason 2.  It’s not the Right Time
I have a couple of tasks on my todo list that have been there for a while. One is that I want to re-dye a pair of leather boots. See, I have this pair of boots that are comfy, but are an ugly beige / stone color. Obviously they seemed like a good idea at the time (on deep clearance at Burlington Coat Factory) but I’m kind of tired of looking at them and how they don’t really go with anything else I own. So recently when my knife-maker husband and I went to the leather store, I picked up some bright blue leather dye. Cue fun DIY project. Except I haven’t done it yet. Why? Well, it’s 100 degrees outside and I’m not likely to need to wear them for a couple of months, plus the dye makes fumes so you really need to do it outside.

Another task that’s lingering is to take my new suit to the tailors. And it’s been a couple of months and I haven’t done it yet. Why? It’s not because I don’t really want the suit. As a person who needs suits for the corporate day job, I decided when I really started needing them regularly (as opposed to the day I interview and never again) to get a new one every three years or so. I was due and this one was on sale (I don’t buy clothing full price — ever) and really pretty. It went with all my other corporate work gear as well. But it’s too big (yay! low carb!) and I need to have it tailored. So why haven’t I? Because I’m in a suit lull where I don’t actually need to wear one until later in the year. This is nice (suits are fun, but it’s not like I want to wear them all the time). So I know I need to do it, but it’s not pressing.

This happens all the time. You need to do something, but it doesn’t seem like the right time. Maybe you need to have your heater serviced. But it’s 100 degrees out and all the heating/cooling guys are booked solid keeping people from roasting to death. Or you know you want to kick off this big new plan, but everything is in retrograde. Note, this can be good or bad. I’m really not going to need those boots just yet. But I may need the suit, if an important meeting comes up. And because I haven’t dealt with it, I won’t be able to wear it. So it’s not like putting things off is always the best thing. It’s just that it doesn’t magically mean it’s not important, just because you aren’t jumping all over it the second it happens.

The key here is to be conscious of the dependencies and do things at the right time. You don’t wait until the snow falls to deal with the heater and you don’t pay the tailor for a rush job. This requires a certain amount of organization. Lots of times, people who do everything right away are just afraid that they’ll forget later. Great, except in the mean time what they are putting off is the rest of their lives, not to mention the sense that there are rhythms and cycles that are important. A time to sow and a time to reap and all that. Schedule things to happen during their right time, like picking good days for magic. It makes everything go more smoothly.

Reason 3.  You Don’t Want to do it — But You Need To
I’m frankly a bit tired of hearing life-coach types suggest that you just not do things you don’t want to do. Sure, you shouldn’t do things you hate just because you feel obligated or are too scared to say no. Life needs boundaries. But I don’t know what kind of world these dude-bros live in that they don’t have to do anything they don’t want to. Anyone who’s every had a pet or a kid or run a household with any kind of budget knows that there are just things that you need to do. I suspect many of these folks (and they do tend toward the, shall I say, masculine side of the species) have either a bunch of money to spend on help or a wife who does all the day-to-day crap they are too important and creative to accomplish.

I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to keep the kind of perfectly clean and always ordered household that my mom or older sister do. I see the kind of ongoing work and effort that requires and you know what? I’m just not that into it. But that doesn’t mean I want to live in a hoarder home either. So lots of things that aren’t my favorite things in the world must get done. Some I can delegate. For example, the budding psychonaut picks up dog poops as part of a deal where he got a second dog, and my husband — all blessings upon him — vacuums and mops, a chore that I hate all out of proportion to the actual effort involved. But there’s still plenty that I can’t put off.

I don’t really like cleaning the toilets (I like it a lot more than vacuuming though — proof that preferences aren’t always logical) but it needs to happen. And laundry is — as anyone who’s a regular reader knows — our household’s personal Sisyphus stone.

So how do you force yourself to do something you just really don’t want to do? First, remind yourself of the end result. A clean bathroom (and a soothing hot bath) is the reward for having scrubbed it. And happy healthy pets and kids are their own reward (or punishment, just depending on the day). Second, schedule time for it and do it quickly. Sometimes when you don’t want to do something you end up dragging the task out, so now it takes even longer. This is like my teen in action — or rather in-action. Set a timer for 10 or 20 minutes and then FLY. Third, ignore how long you thing it will take. Every day after dinner, I’m convinced that it will take 1000 years to clean the kitchen up. But it only ever takes like half an hour, MAXIMUM. Usually it’s much quicker. Fourth, break things into tiny chunks. Ever let things get really bad and then engage in the torture called “housecleaning day.” Yeah, me too. But it’s smarter to just do little bits as you go, so it’s not CLEAN ALL THE THINGS.

Finally, don’t get shit dirty. I don’t know why this doesn’t occur to more people. For example, we take off our shoes inside. Why? Because it keep our floors a lot cleaner, so less vacuuming and mopping (and you know how I feel about that). We use coasters. We try to empty the dishwasher up front so dirties can just go hang out there instead of on the counters. We try to get shit dealt with do it doesn’t pile up (thinking about the living room right now and feeling the prickle of hypocrisy… but dammit we try). After work I take off my nicer clothing and put on some comfy sweats. My jeans and cardigans and stuff can get worn again and I’m more comfortable and there’s less laundry.

There are lots of reasons we don’t always do all the stuff on our todo lists. And it’s not just because we don’t care. Cut yourself some slack and realize that if you can get the crap work out of the way, make some helpful habits, and allow things to happen in their right time — you will be happier and more organized as well.