Tar Tasks
The stickiest thing that's holding you back
Tar Tasks are the dead weight To Do List items dragging down your soul.
Yes, THAT one.
Tar Tasks are killing me.
They’re killing you too.
We’re both desperately avoiding the goopy, stifling sense of existential dread that ambulates into our mind palace whenever we’re forced to remember they’re yet to be completed.
Sometimes we’re aggressively productive about other things as a way to dodge our Tar Task To Do List.
Sometimes we’re full on, late stage, therapeutically avoidant, millennial depression-pilled by said Tar Tasks.
Either way, those damn dirty Tar Tasks still don’t get doggone done.
What are Tar Tasks
They’re the infinite inertia boulder on your chest Task on your To Do List that you should’ve checked off days (weeks, maybe months??) ago.
But you didn’t.
You couldn’t!
So we’re here now.
Together.
In this stupid, self-imposed misery right alongside those goofy ass wooly mammoths.
Tar Tasks can be anything, but they’re often perniciously simple.
“Create the roadmap”
“Review the data”
“Ship the product”
And that simplicity is basically the root of their viscoid toxicity.
Why are Tar Tasks?
Fear mostly.
Specifically, fear of failure.
You’ve accidentally on-purpose given yourself a simple task that’s actually not simple.
You know it’s not simple, but you wrote it down in a way that’s so straightforward an idiot should be able to do it.
Yet we (the idiot) cannot do it.
Because the task pointer is a liar.
And this lie haunts your To Do List.
Forever.
But!
If you never start it, ipso facto you’ll never have to prove to yourself you’re an idiot.
Thus you delay your ego death for yet another day.
So the Tar Task lives on…
Note: Some things that seem like Tar Tasks are actually just stuff you really hate doing. I call these Hassle Hurdles.
These are different because they’re usually avoided because you actively dislike the activity rather than feel an amorphous helplessness. Fortunately, these are easier to identify.
A good rule of thumb is if you roll your eyes or groan when someone asks you about it, it’s probably a Hassle Hurdle.
How do I rid myself of the yoke of my own oppression?
🤷♂️
lol jk bestie
There are a couple ways to consistently clean up seemingly unclearable Tar Tasks.
From easiest to hardest:
Give up! (Not a joke)
If you’ve avoided doing something for days, weeks, or months and nothing has exploded… is it really that important to do?
I don’t know your life, friendo, but sometimes you realize you’re carrying around a gilded sack of guilt shit for absolutely no reason and the best thing you can do for yourself is to just… drop it.
But if you can’t do that (dave)Get somebody else to do it (Also not a joke)
Sometimes you gotta accept that you’ve got some kryptonite.
If you always never type up your customer interview analyses and the notes just keep stacking, it’s more efficient to negotiate with your partner to take it over.
(This is also the best way to handle Hassle Hurdles)
Generally, it’s waaaaay easier to adapt to your body than it is to adapt your body to you.Break it the fuck down, you psycho
You’re killing us, smalls.
That Tar Task just ain’t gonna hunt.
Something’s gotta give. (etc etc)
Take your one, straight-forward, completely bullshit Tar Task and make it human executable by prepending a simple phrase:
“Write out the 10 steps required to [TAR TASK GOES HERE]”
This turns the 1 task you can’t possibly do into 10 sub-tasks that now might actually get done.
Simple as.
Godspeed, traveler.
(And yes, of course, for sure, obviously, I fully wrote this to avoid my own set of Tar Tasks 🫡)
If you enjoyed this…
I’m trying Option 4: journal about why I fear the task