Giant Buckets
I need to catch up on my email.
Those calls aren’t going to answer themselves.
My desk is a wreck.
Add in housework or laundry, and the list gets even longer.
At first glance, these all sound like tasks. Things that need to get done.
But what if none of them are actually tasks at all?
Email isn’t a task. It’s dozens of replies, decisions, and bits of filing hiding under a single label.
Phone calls aren’t a task. They’re individual conversations, each with its own purpose and possible follow-up.
A messy desk isn’t a task. It’s papers to sort, things to put away, notes for later, and maybe a few things that simply need to be thrown away.
They’re not tasks.
They’re categories.
Somewhere along the way, we start lumping related work into larger and larger categories. A handful of emails becomes “my email.” A few papers become “getting organized.” Several small responsibilities become a project (or category) sitting in the back of our minds.
Then that category gets bigger.
And bigger.
Eventually, maybe it becomes a bucket.
And as that bucket grows, it often starts to feel heavier. More complicated. More time-consuming.
Not because the work itself has changed, but because the way we’re thinking about it has.
A large, undefined project can be difficult to start. It feels like it needs a block of uninterrupted time, a burst of motivation, or a completely free afternoon.
A single task feels different.
Answer one email.
Return one phone call.
File one piece of paper from the desk.
The work may eventually add up to the same amount of effort, but the starting point feels much more manageable.
For me, this showed up in a project I had been putting off.
In my head, it had become one giant thing. The kind of thing that needed that free afternoon, extra energy, and the perfect beverage before I could even begin.
The reality was much smaller.
Instead of focusing on the entire bucket, I focused on the first thing inside it.
When that task was done, I focused on the next thing.
Then the next.
The project itself didn’t change and the amount of work didn’t disappear.
The framing changed.
It became do-able.
Manage-able.
Squeeze-in-able.
Sometimes that’s all I need to get moving again.
