Break a task into steps
Seven questions. What comes out is a list you wrote, not a verdict on you.
The short version
- Type in one task that has not moved. Answer seven short questions. You get back a list of concrete steps in your own words.
- Breaking a task down pays when the task is genuinely yours and genuinely unclear; it costs when the task is clear and the real obstacle is that it is somebody else's to give you, or that it should not be happening at all. The second question here checks for that before doing anything else.
- This is not a test and it returns nothing about you. It rearranges what you type and hands it back.
A task that will not move is usually not one task. It is a task with something unresolved sitting in front of it — a decision nobody has made, an email nobody has sent, a detail that was never specified. The questions below are designed to find that thing, because it is the thing you have actually been stuck on.
Before you begin
Pick one task. Not the biggest one — the one that has been sitting there longest without changing. Nothing you type is saved.
Questions
Question 1 of 7
This one is not a breaking-down problem
Your list
Copy it somewhere it will survive
Select the text below and copy it into whatever you already use. This page keeps nothing.
Two things to read off your own list
Look at what you wrote for waiting on and for where it stops being clear. Those two lines are usually the same line. A task that becomes vague halfway through is normally a task where somebody else holds information that was never handed over.
That makes the ask specific and easy to send: I can do the first part now — I need the brief, the budget, or the date before the second part. Sending that today moves the task further than another hour of planning will.
Worth knowing. Deciding when and where you will do something, rather than only that you will, has one of the more reliable effects in this literature — Gollwitzer and Sheeran pooled 94 studies and found a medium-to-large effect (Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006). That is why the tool asks for a day, a time and a place, and why the first action has to be physical rather than a decision.
Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere. What you type exists only while this page is open.
Written for Thought Club as general guidance, not medical advice. Free to read, print, and share.
More resources
All resources →One capture spot
Give every stray thought one place to land, so nothing lives only in your head.
Brain dump
Empty everything onto the page first, then decide what actually needs doing.
Making a task smaller
Shrink a job until the first step is small enough to just start.