The art of getting it done…

An alarming number of us have one. And whether yours is the marketing strategy for a £700m business or a 10-foot stack of ironing, the ability to avoid making a start on certain tasks afflicts even the most disciplined amongst us. So if you’re shoving receipts into an already overstuffed wallet with a promise to do six months’ expenses tomorrow or avoiding asking new friends round for dinner because at least two of them will have to eat off Winnie the Pooh plates, it may just be time to meet the challenge head on.

In fact we can become so adept at avoiding a task that it grows three heads and becomes a monster we simply don’t feel able to stand up to.

A good friend of mine once confided there was an expensive hand wash only jumper at the bottom of her wash basket. Months went by and she couldn’t face up to the cashmere challenge and fear of shrinkage. She avoided the jumper at all costs – eventually convinced it must have started rotting. Sadly it’s not a happy ending. After eight years she confessed! Her husband took matters into his own hands and ‘dealt with’ the jumper, which I understand was entire, but stiff.

If you’ve got rotting jumper syndrome, try these top tips for slaying the monster:

1. Talk to it. Coax yourself out of hiding so you can see the scale of the task. If you’re avoiding the spare room because it’s rammed with stuff, go and sit in it. Work out how you want the room to look. This will give you a good idea of what needs to be shipped out or changed to achieve it.

2. Make a start. Just take 10 minutes and do one thing. If you haven’t touched your accounts for the last seven months and can’t give them to the bookkeeper until they’re in some sort of order, try sorting your receipts into months or print off all the electronic invoices you’ve received – it doesn’t matter what you do, just start!

3. Rope in some help. If you can’t quite bring yourself to throw out those leather Escada trousers from 1989, ask a friend to help with your sort out. Objectivity can be priceless.

4. Make sure you’ve got all the tools for the job. It’s no good tackling the marketing strategy if you’ve no idea how much market share you have or want. You can’t spring clean the bedroom if you’ve run out of polish and you won’t get very far with your e-newsletter if your mailing list isn’t up to scratch. And not having the right screwdriver handy will give you the perfect excuse not to get on with it!

5. Ask for input. Are you putting it off because you’re unsure where to start? It’s not always easy to hold up your hands and ask for help. If you see it as a weakness, change your thinking. Think wider than just your immediate colleagues: professional bodies, Linked In groups, Twitter, there’s plenty of people to ask that won’t see your request as anything out of the ordinary.

6. Make it impossible to put it off any longer. If all else fails empty the box that needs sorting onto your bed, tell your boss you’ll be presenting the strategy to the board at the next meeting, invite your friends around for dinner in two weeks’ time, try on the leather trousers from 1989 – if you can get them higher than your knees, trust me, they’re going to look ridiculous.