Comfort zone trap

I have recently been running a mini-survey, asking people the following question:

If you have 3 tasks to prioritise, and you have to prioritise now, how would you do it?

The answers I got back are quite varied, but two answers stood out in particular:

• The fastest thing
• The easiest thing

Intuitively these don’t seem that bad at face value, but lets look at what will happen if we keep prioritising this way over a long period.

The speed method stops you from doing anything that is not immediately clear and well defined. So any large important tasks will not get started as long as there are smaller tasks that come along.

The easy method is relative - it is easy to you. This means you will prioritise things that you are comfortable with and not those that are different or more difficult at face value.

Neither of these methods take into account the value of completing the task. Large, difficult or unusual tasks that have high value will not get done if you prioritise this way. Doing work that is easy (comfortable) or fast first can lead you to the illusion of productivity, work is being done but if it is low value it will not add up to much.