Seth Godin says people avoiding real work is the main activity online.

I agree.

I do it myself at times.

To tackle this situation, Seth suggests having productive choices to break up the work. First, you can do the work that is hard, work that involves creativity and then do the work that’s mundane but still useful.

So, you can write a script for a video that you want to make first and when you want to take a break you can create invoices to send to your customers.

Or, you can create a pitch deck for your investment first and then you can work on taxes.

This way you get away from important work but still do something useful before coming to that work.

I have tried this approach even before Seth shared about it but the urge is always to do the mundane work first before hard creative work. The order matters but not much if you are able to squeeze creative work between mundane.

I understand that if you are like most of us who go online to avoid real work it will be difficult for you first to resist the temptation of doing what you are used to do online.

If that is the case with you, try this approach.

Start with creative work, follow it with mundane but useful work, and follow it with whatever you are used to do online. Try it in short bursts – 40 minutes of creative work, followed by 20 minutes of mundane work and then 20 minutes of online time.

It will help in two ways. One, you are putting real work first so you’ll move ahead with whatever it is that you need to do. Two, you are labeling online time as such and not calling it doing the work so you will be mindful of not overdoing it.

The temptation will be big to stay online to avoid real work. Resist this temptation. It is better than giving in to temptation. Then go back to important work. Make sure that your online time is less than real work time.

Will you try this approach?

What will you choose as creative work and mundane work? Think about it.