Make Before You Manage

No matter what your job title is, we are all managers. We are managers of one. But beyond managing what we're paid for, we all have to manage competing priorities and demands: trying to deliver value on a timeline, while also dealing with dentist appointments, attending meetings, maintaining fitness, doing home improvement projects, scheduling car maintenance, and maintaining relational health.

It's enough to make you feel like you have no control over your own life. One thing I've found helpful is that before digging into any externally imposed to-do list, create something that you want to create. It could be art, writing, coding, or anything really. The point is to ensure that at the end of the day, you've made progress on something meaningful. There is tangible work to show for your time and effort. The big rocks have been rolled forward, if only an inch.

Those inches add up and eventually can be profoundly impactful in your life. This is sort of the opposite of my other advice about doing the most dreaded thing first, and yet both things can be true at different times. The end goal is to find a sense of freedom and autonomy in your life.