[rdlecler1]

I've read that you should break up large tasks into their most atomic parts which are psychologically less overwhelming. So rather than write article, you might have, research subject (2 hours), brains storm bullet points of questions, write outline, ... At our company I constantly worry about us being over ambitious because when we are we don't get things done. Better to start with a small milestone where everyone can be on the same page, see and enjoy the result, and move on to the next thing when it's complete.

[colmvp]

That's one of the reasons why I like the pomodoro technique. You can always narrow even the most complex issues into smaller pieces that can be accomplished in a short sprint.

[bufordsharkley]

Agreed. The pomodoro technique asks that no task is more than 7 pomodoros (sets of 25 minutes of focused work).

With this constraint, what once looked like an overwhelming and nebulous task now seems manageable and concrete.

[MaulingMonkey]

A pattern I'm recently noticing for myself is that even if a task doesn't feel "overwhelming" or "nebulous" per se, it seems to be easier to motivate myself to knock out a small task than a large one.

Rinse a dish. Open a letter. Rename a variable. Root cause a bug. Rough out the skeleton for a feature. Write a unit test. Download an installer. Make a commit. Email someone.

I'm noting there's a difference between small tasks and a small task. Big TODO lists may not be nebulous - I find them quite handy for ensuring a complete and thorough job is done, and for project progress tracking - but they're still big, potentially overwhelming huge things. And if not overwhelming, something that I'm not going to finish today anyways - it won't hurt to wait until tomorrow...

Instead of more TODO lists, I should invest in having a TODO item.