Today’s MicroTask is proofreading a post I HAD started yesterday. I don’t usually proofread or do a second draft, though I am warming to the practice now that I am seeing the advantage to working in multiple small steps. For someone as impatient as me, this is a big transition.

The day started with a meeting, when I drove to a local coffee shop to drop off of wine for a local art award show. I figured I might as well stay and try to do some work while I was there.

But what to do for a micro task? I checked my mail and looked at blog traffic, and saw my unfinished post from yesterday. Why not “just read it” in a manner similar to “just looking into the box” yesterday? And so it was decided. Not having the MicroTask form available to write on, I used an index card from my bag.

There was a momentary struggle with focus as I forced myself to start rereading the article. I immediately saw a problem with phrasing, and fell into improving it the flow. After a couple of hours, I had a stronger draft (I’ll review it a third time tomorrow), and also got in a few improvements on the MicroTask sheet itself. The day was capped by a work session followed by a curry dinner with friends. All in all, a rather productive day.

It seems that my microtasks, as annoying small as they had first seemed, are actually gateways into doing some useful work. There’s something in the back of my mind that is yelling out warnings, though, about how losing one’s self in tasks of small consequence is a waste of potential, but this feeling of getting things done by merely having the guts to LOOK at them and letting my mind get to work feels very good. Learning to pick the right mindset for a given situation may be a good way to learn how to harness those good feelings in service of sustainable productivity.