Defusing uninteresting blobs of work

You know the sensation of finally getting to a task you’ve been putting off for months because you know it’s going to take hours of boring slog, then once you’ve started find that you’re done in fifteen minutes?

Would you have started earlier had you known it wouldn’t be so bad?

When you hand your implementors and builders a chunk of work that’s large, ill-defined, and (perhaps most importantly) uninteresting or even miserable, don’t be too surprised when other projects magically grow in urgency. You can force the issue by expending some authority—as a one-off, this can be more effective than willpower in the individual case–or you can you can find a way to make the first step small and engaging, and just assign that.