When you intend to do something, are you set up to follow through?

If you find that it’s more difficult than you think, I’d like to suggest a metaphor and two techniques:

Baking new intentions: Start your workday with a paper index card which has a list of a few tasks, preferably with the most important task at the top. Ideally, you write this index card at the end of the previous workday. Usually, for me, it’s hastily written just before I fall asleep, which is fine. 

Your intention for the present moment started the day before, as if you baked or marinated it overnight. You will wake up with a clear head and be able to take on the most important task of the day right after breakfast.

I can’t overstate how important the paper index card is. It offers a finite space for you to write a limited number of tasks. If you use a digital task tracker, I would encourage you to write down the most important tasks from there on paper. I currently store tasks in Trello, then schedule them in a paper calendar, one for each project.

Cleaning leftover intentions: If you’re used to opening your laptop and seeing an assortment of tabs and windows you left open from yesterday, you’ll know how painfully distracting this feels. This clutter bumps whatever you intended to do out of your mind. But if this happens to you, as it does for me, this is the status quo. There are just too many things to read and learn. Your intentions from yesterday spilled over to today, similar to the idea that when you switch tasks your mind is still preoccupied with the previous task (known as attention residue). 

The ideal thing to do here is to take even just a few minutes to prioritize and plan at the end of the previous day. Or, in the worst case scenario, just close everything when you open your laptop.

The metaphor involves treating your intentions as a dish you want to bake, and your work environment as a kitchen. Approach it like a professional chef would. 

The two techniques: set up new, constructive, intentions to bake overnight, and clean up leftover, unimportant, intentions from the previous day. I will keep my eyes peeled for more useful ways to think about this.

This second scenario actually gets in the way of my sleep, as well. When I experience fragmented sleep, and I want to pull up a meditation on my laptop (because my phone is on Airplane mode), the last thing that I want to see are these leftover intentions from yesterday.

Following through with an intention first thing in the morning feels great; it’s a source of lasting pride and momentum. These techniques are useful for that; I hope you get to apply these techniques to feel that way. And, I would invite you to share the techniques you discover along the way with the rest of us.