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Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 18, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Imagine you have a number of tasks to do. Some of them are relatively quick - maybe up to 15-20 minutes, some will probably take hours. You will eventually need to do all the tasks but you can do them in pretty much any order. Which ones do you start with? Is it the small ones to get a quick win and keep yourself motivated, or the largest one, so that once you do them you'd feel you made a lot of progress and what is left is easy work now compared to what you've already done? What would you do and why?

I’d start with a quick one, then alternate between quick and long. Ideally do a few quick ones in between each long one in order to help keep myself engaged. This method would give me a quick initial win, but also prevent me from bogging down at the end when I have multiple back-to-back long projects to do.

That’s in the perfect world, at least. In practice, I’d do a couple of quick ones, a couple of long ones, get distracted, then unexpectedly gain a burst of energy and tear through a number of longer projects at high speed, then procrastinate and possibly give up on the rest entirely.