Task vs Project: Why Your List Never Gets Done

(Note: This is a formatted and slightly edited, AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through. Please excuse any spelling, grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

You know that one task that’s been sitting on your list for weeks? Every time you see it, you feel a little bit worse about yourself. Maybe you think you need more time, more motivation, or even a better planner, but it’s not you. There’s one question that explains why it’s not getting done, and I’m sharing with you what that question is today.

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you’re ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast.

Hey, hey. Welcome back to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast. If you’ve got a to-do list that’s been rolling over week after week, then today’s episode is for you. I’m sharing the one question that I wish I would’ve been asked back then, and why it changes the way that you look at your entire to-do list.

But before we dive in, if you’re still feeling buried under your list right now, I have a free workshop called Three Steps to Say Goodbye to Task Overload. Today’s question is just step one, and in the workshop I go through all of the other steps. This is just two more steps, and it’s going to be linked in the show notes or in the description, depending on where you’re watching this.

So a few years ago, I started in the online space as a blogger. So I used to be a blogger. I was working in a corporate job, super demanding job, so my schedule was a little bit different than it is now. So back then I would work, I would put my son to bed, uh, you know, after eating dinner, and then I would get to work on the blog.

And I would open my weekly planner, I used to have a paper planner at the time, and I would write down, I would see this task that I had assigned to myself for a certain day that said to write a blog post, and I would see it there as one task, right? One task on an evening after putting my son to bed. And I would always get so frustrated because it never got done in one night.

I would put it on there, “Write blog post, get it done tonight,” and it never would get done even though I would work on it for a few hours, and I couldn’t really figure out what was going on. Like, I need to get a blog post out every single week, right? And so sometimes it was taking me multiple days, multiple days of working in the evenings after my son went to bed just to get the stinking blog post out.

So it was taking, like, a whole week, right? And I was really confused because I was like I have this down, I have it on my planner, I’m working on it, but I don’t know why it doesn’t seem to be working, why I’m not getting it done. So maybe you have a task like that right now. Maybe you have one that keeps rolling over every single day, week after week, and you just keep telling yourself, “You know what?

Let- let’s just push through. Let’s just keep working at it. Let’s just do what we can, and it’ll get done when it gets done.” And I thought the same thing, until I figured out that it wasn’t about how hard I was trying. So your list is actually probably not even too long, but it’s mislabeled, because there are some things on your to-do list that should not even be on your to-do list in the first place, because they’re something much bigger than what you think it is.

So some of what it was on my list is never gonna be something or was never gonna be something that I could finish in just one go, in just a 15-minute or a one-hour or two-hour time slot. So of course, it never got checked off until, like, the end of the week. And so some examples that also kind of fall under this category were things like updating my website, or organizing the garage, or decluttering the office.

Like, those are all things and tasks that have lived on my to-do list in the past, and they just kind of rolled over, rolled over, rolled over for some of them months. Some of them are still there because of the question that we’re going to cover. So the question that you wanna ask yourself when you’re looking at something on your to-do list and you’re like, “I cannot seem to get this done.

I keep trying and it’s not working. It keeps rolling over every single week,” the question that you need to ask yourself is: Is this a task or is it a project? A task is something you can do in one sitting. A project is something that involves multiple steps, each with its own timeframe. So projects typically need a much bigger, more flexible system to help you actually get it done, right?

Because in the single little to-do list that you’re writing on a sticky note- It’s a lot. It’s a lot of steps. So in the free workshop, we actually go deeper into this difference, and I help you spot which one is a task and which one is a project. So we go deeper into it in the, the free workshop. So if you’re interested in that, definitely go ahead and sign up in the link in the show notes.

Now, going back to what I was saying before, writing a blog post, which was the task on my to-do list, was never actually a task. That one was a project, a project that I have now developed into a full system because it has multiple steps, right? Writing a blog post, it doesn’t mean I just get to sit down and start writing.

No, I need to do keyword research, I need to write the outline, I need to write the draft, I need to decide the title, I need to make sure there’s keywords in there, I need to create the pins for it, I need… Like, there’s so many other steps involved in this thing that I was considering a task in the past, and really turned out to be a project.

And so once you can tell the difference, you can stop blaming yourself for all of the things that you were never able to finish in one go, because now you’re having this realization of, “Oh, that’s why I haven’t gotten it done. That’s why I haven’t been able to finish it, because it’s a project, and a project needs to be broken down.

Hello.” And then you start making progress towards getting that done, right? So now you can start to see your list clearly, maybe for the first time ever on what can actually get done today and what is going to take you a little bit more time. Now, in Luke 14:28, Jesus talks about counting the cost before you start building, because when you start without knowing the size of the thing that you’re working on, y- it’s how you end up getting stuck halfway, okay?

So that is what this question does. It’s helping you count the cost before something goes on your to-do list. You have to know what it is that you’re actually doing. Let me actually pull up what this verse is. I didn’t write down what the verse actually is on my notes, so let me pull it up here on my app Luke 14

28. This is under the cost of being a disciple, and verse 28 says, “But don’t begin until you count the cost, for who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it?” There you have it. Those are red letters spoken by Jesus himself. You need to know what you’re getting into before you even get started, and that is the whole point of this question.

This question is helping you figure out if this is a task or if it’s a project. And if it’s a project, there’s more things that need to be set up. There’s more things that need to be counted to see what is actually, what is actually going to take to get done. So whatever other reason you might have been blaming, time, energy, motivation, focus, a lot of the time it’s really just that there is a project been sitting, hiding in your to-do list as a task.

So as an action step for this episode, I want you to look at some of your to-dos, your to-do list or some items on your to-do list and go through it with this question, “This is a task or this is a project?” A task could be something like- Eat a snack. And maybe it’s not, like, it could be something like eat a banana, ’cause you don’t have to prepare a banana.

A snack might even involve you, like, having to figure out what snack it is or cr- make your snack or bake your snack. So a task is something you can do in one step in a single sitting. Okay? Those are the tasks. Anything that involves multiple steps is a project. So go through your to-do list and see how many of the items sitting on there have been listed as tasks when they should have really been projects.

Okay? And if you can’t get things done, this is the question you should always be asking yourself. Okay? So the takeaway here is to really take those few seconds, look at your to-do list or your planner or whatever it is that you’re using, and ask yourself this question every single time. This is not just, like, a one-time thing.

This is something that I want you to practice over and over and over again, no matter what. No, i- if you feel like you can’t get things done, then this is a question I want you to go to. Okay? And doing that can save you a lot of frustration and can really show you what needs to be broken down even further.

So again, this question is step one. There’s two more steps that help you actually move those projects forward once you have identified what those projects are, and that’s what we cover inside of my free workshop. So they’re, the next two steps are part of this eliminating of the task overload, because many times the task overload is what has been living in our head.

We have all of these mental tabs open. We have all of these items sitting on our to-do list, and we can’t seem to get things done. So if that is you and you want to be able to take this even further, then definitely sign up for my free workshop. The link is in the show notes, and depending on wherever you’re listening, please subscribe or follow, and I’ll be back with another episode soon.

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It’s where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.