Use AI to break goals into actionable tasks

- What's one of the main causes of procrastination? Some people will tell you it's an emotional issue. Others will tell you, and I think it's a bit mean, that procrastination is a character flaw and you're just being lazy. But research shows that one of the biggest predictors of procrastination is task aversiveness. It's just a fancy term for when the task you're dealing with is a little bit too hard, too complex, or too overwhelming. And this connects directly to what we've been discussing. We've talked about the knowledge problem, the time problem, and now, we're facing the motivation problem. This is when we want to achieve a goal, but it feels like it's a bit too much. It's daunting, it's overwhelming. Well, don't worry. Research systematically shows that one of the best things you can do when a project looks a little too hard is to make it easy. Break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks. Study after study shows that this is one of the most effective ways to achieve your goals. I know people who wrote books, started businesses, launched successful YouTube channels, and if they woke up each day and saw an item on their to-do list that just said start business, of course they would've given up a long time ago. But when you start with call the local chamber of commerce to get info about business registration, and that just takes 15 minutes, well, things get a lot more doable. That's why it works. If your project seems big and challenging, you'll need a lot of motivation, which we don't have every day. But if your project is doable in small chunks, a lot less motivation is needed. But you know, sometimes all this breaking down of project into smaller tasks can itself be very overwhelming. It takes time and reflection, and it becomes yet another barrier to action. This is where AI becomes your productivity superpower. Let me show you how this works. Let's say you have a goal to start a podcast. Watch what happens when we prompt the AI like this. "I want to start a podcast, but I'm feeling overwhelmed. Can you help me break this down into very small specific tasks that would take no more than 30 minutes each? Please start with the absolute basics." Look at how the AI generates a detailed list of micro tasks. Each one is concrete, specific, and most importantly, doable. But here is a pro tip. Don't just take the AI's first output. Have a conversation with it. If any task feels too big, ask the AI to break it down further. The key is to keep going until every task feels easy enough that you think, "Oh, I could do that right now or even tomorrow." Try this yourself after our session. Take one goal that's been intimidating you and use AI to break it down into tasks so small that they almost feel trivial. Because remember, the path to achieving anything significant is rarely about making huge leaps. It's about taking small, consistent steps, and with AI, mapping out those steps just got a whole lot easier.