Why we prioritize the small tasks

Why do we always put off the big, important tasks and tackle the small tasks first? Journalist Fleur Baxmeier keeps getting caught in the same trap. Is there a better way to approach all the things we need to do?

Thirteen years ago, when I went to view the house where I now live, my first thought was, ‘It’s perfect, but the metal kitchen cabinets have to go. I need to get rid of those rickety cupboards, the old oven, the moldy drain and the leaky refrigerator’. Those were the first things I planned to do. ‘Then I’ll make the layout more efficient, add new white tiles, put in a dishwasher and new pipes under 
the floor,’ I told myself. ‘It will beautiful.’

The only stumbling block was that I work from home as a freelance journalist, so I had to think really hard about when all the work could be done. Preferably not during a really busy period, but then again, how do you plan for that? Finding the right contractor was another problem. There are plenty of builders, but which one should I choose? My boyfriend and I couldn’t completely agree on the colors either. The same went for the boyfriend after him, by the way.

Years passed, and I thought about that unrealized new kitchen often. Almost every evening, actually, whenever I would make yet another attempt to prepare a meal on the two burners that still worked, and occasionally also in the morning when I would find the butter frozen into a layer of ice at the back 
of the refrigerator. And the need to make major changes to my open-plan kitchen, visible from every corner of the ground floor, became an excuse to put off making other changes to my home’s interior, too.