You need to finish your website (or work on your novel. Or write your screenplay). You keep thinking about it. It’s been on your list for at least six months. Maybe longer. You’ve spent a little time on it…when, maybe a month ago? Felt great in the moment, and you wanted to check it off, but of course it wasn’t actually done.

Each time a new week rolls around you think, I’ve got to do that. But then there doesn’t seem to be a real spot on your calendar when it makes sense. Or maybe it is literally on your list today (and every day) but when you look at it, you have a momentary blackout and before you know it, you’re doomscrolling without knowing how you even got there.

Your project has become toxic. The accumulation of self-pressure and shame makes it ever harder to get into it, and the longer it sits, the more alienated from it you become.

But what if you really, truly do want or need to finish your website (or fill your thing in here). What’s getting in the way?

Why does telling yourself you’ll “finish website” mean it never gets finished?

Because “finish” is not an action.

Sure, finish is a verb, so technically it represents action. But in practice it covers a myriad of individual actions, all necessary in order to reach a state of “finished.” It also implies you have a clear understanding of what that state of “finished” actually is. And that you’ll recognize it when you see it.

The problem is that “finish website” is not a task. It’s a project.

Projects involve multiple steps

It’s all too easy to mistake all kinds of projects of varying levels of complexity for tasks. Everything from “get a flu shot” to “launch my podcast” can fool you into thinking they’re straightforward tasks.

For example, an item on your to-do list like “email my client” might appear to be a simple 5-minute task. But when you sit down to write it, you realize you need to review your meeting notes, pull together some additional resources to attach, and craft a message that’s both professional and personable. Suddenly, that ”quick” email has turned into a 30-minute mini-project.

So, if even seemingly small projects can involve more steps than you initially realize, it’s no surprise that big, ambitious projects, especially self-generated projects with no concrete deadlines, are so challenging to get off the ground and to finish.

This distinction between projects and tasks stems from David Allen’s Getting Things Done, but there’s a specific failure mode that Allen’s definition does not touch: What do you do when you have a good idea what “done” looks like for a project, but you have no idea how long it’ll take to get there, or what’s in the middle… and on top of that, you lacks any external forcing function to keep the project moving?

How do you make progress on creative work without deadlines?

This is the core challenge of self-generated work: projects you’ve assigned yourself, with no external deadline and no one waiting on them but you. The Creative Focus Workshop is designed to solve this specific problem, and Quota Tasks are the key tool we use.

What is a “task”?

There are essentially two types of tasks:

1. Outcome-based tasks: These are finite tasks like “clean the ports on my iPhone.” You can do this kind of task in a specific period of time, finish it, and check it off.
2. Time-bound tasks, or Quota Tasks: A Quota Task is a set quantity of time you’re planning to devote to something. (As in: “Spend one hour working on mind map for my new blog series.”)

When you make that activity time-bound, you’re more likely to do it. You can do it for the allotted amount of time and then check it off your list. (Satisfying!)

If you’re not done in one hour, you can schedule a second session. But making the task time-bound also allows you to stop and move on to new things after that hour is up. You won’t feel trapped by the task or fall into self-blame for not finishing. That’s why I strongly recommend using Quota Tasks to lend structure to your most challenging work.

Take a moment to identify 2-3 tasks on your list that have been sitting there a while, especially ones that have a bit of the “ick” about them. Are they actually projects? Are they relatively short outcome-based tasks that you simply haven’t given a chunk of time to? Or are they long, amorphous, hard to finish tasks…that might be candidates for a Quota?

Quota Tasks: The flex in the Flexible Container

A Quota Task is a set quantity of time you’re planning to devote to something: “spend one hour working on X,” rather than “finish X.” For open-ended activities that will take an unknown and probably substantial amount of time, Quota Tasks lend structure without requiring you to know the end in advance.

“Launch podcast” is not a task, it’s a project with many steps. “Work one hour on a launch plan for my podcast” is a Quota Task that can get you to the finish line. You might repeat it twice, five times, or twenty—however many it takes.

What this definition obscures is the massive power of leaning on Quota Tasks for as much as you possibly can in your planning.

When I first came up with this idea, I would say a Quota Task could be output-bound or time-bound. It could be “write 150 words” or “write 30 minutes.”

I have thrown that out completely. If I ever said that to you before, forget I ever said it. Quota Tasks are time-bound. Whatever you do within the time you allot yourself, that counts as completing the task. You get a gold star. Keep moving.

Why is this so powerful? Well, what do we want, more than anything else in our creative lives?

To do the work. To show up and be present with it.

A Quota Task supports exactly that. It takes the focus off the end goal and puts it squarely where it belongs: on being present with your work, moving it forward as part of the way you live your life. This is how you weave your work into your days, rather than working in feast-or-famine bursts.

It’s also how you stop developing a poisonous relationship with your project, where you feel guilty every time you look at it because you didn’t make the deadline, didn’t do the thing.

On the practical side: when you’re dealing with open-ended projects, you may have no idea what a realistic timeline looks like, especially if you’re new to this kind of work. That’s just how it goes. You’ll be tempted to write “draft sales page” on your list as if it’s a one-and-done task. But it’s very unlikely you’ll finish that draft in one sitting. Instead, a quota-based action plan for “draft sales page” looks like this:

• Compile the primary points to hit on the page (Outcome-based task)
• Choose a template or framework to follow (Outcome-based task)
• Work one hour on a crappy first draft (Quota Task)

You may repeat that last task any number of times before you’re done, but I guarantee that if you work on it steadily for some number of quota sessions, you will finish.

The other thing Quota Tasks handle gracefully is Hofstadter’s Law, the near-universal human tendency to underestimate how long things take. When you’ve fallen prey to it (and you will), you don’t have to blow up your plan. Simply add more quotas and keep moving. [For more on how this works inside a larger project timeline, see the Flexible Container post.]

Do not underestimate the power of assigning yourself tasks that you can actually check off your list, as opposed to leaving “work on screenplay” on your to-do list for a year and never getting to check it off (despite the fact that you are in fact working on your screenplay).

Quota Tasks are how you build a consistent creative practice without relying on “motivation” or self-discipline. The knowledge and proof that you’re keeping faith with yourself, doing what you set out to do, is more powerful than any deadline.

“I was playing the game as if I was going to be submitting my timesheets to somebody in accounting.”

Shelley Evans is a long-time client who used Quota Tasks to upend her creative practice. She explored this in depth with me on the Autonomous Creative podcast. Shelley is a former screenwriter who had a long and successful career in Hollywood that was, “both incredibly satisfying—I love film—and also very draining.”

”Then one day, I had this realization that my dysfunctional marriage was to my career. It was as abusive as an alcoholic spouse… I was constantly working under punishing deadlines, with powerful, overwhelming rewards and confusing messages. It worked really well for me, until it stopped.”

She stepped away from the industry to write a novel. But she quickly realized that all the habits she’d developed to deliver work in that dysfunctional system failed her when it came to self-generated work. “I couldn’t be the alcoholic spouse to myself. I couldn’t scream at myself and get myself to do things.”

Shelley discovered the Creative Focus Workshop a few years ago. She implemented the CFW approach and found it helpful from the get-go, but it was only after a year or so of practice as she was thinking through her core values with a Creative Focus Workshop activity that it clicked: “I thought, holy God, the way I’m approaching this is not supporting my core values at all. I was playing the game as if I was going to be submitting my timesheets to somebody in accounting. It was only about putting in the hours, and not the quality of the hours.”

What happens when Quota Tasks lead you the wrong direction?

Even when you’re putting in the hours, and therefore making solid progress, if you’re not hitting those big, visible milestones, your overactive inner critic—what I call the Should Monster—is likely to lash out with the self-blame. Should Monsters initially tend to be highly skeptical of Quota Tasks, though they do calm down eventually as they see how effective they are.

During a coaching session, I had suggested that Shelley could add marbles to a jar to track her Quota Tasks (a physical form of Action Tracker). One marble equals one hour. The marbles helped her to ease up on berating herself for missing self-imposed deadlines. But then, she saw that the marbles alone had just shifted the locus of the self-punishment.

“I would put the marbles in the jar, and then I would be like, you didn’t write any pages. These pages suck. All you did was stick your finger up your nose and not know what the outline is. What is wrong with you? My brain just wants to snap back into the place of: This isn’t fast enough. This isn’t good enough. This isn’t fast enough. This isn’t good enough.”

“My goal is not to win at hours. I don’t want to be on the leaderboard of hours. I want to be present. What I’m really trying to get to is an engaged creative practice. That’s what I want.”

The answer for Shelley was to pay attention to what really goes into writing. It’s not only word-count. It’s also all the reading and research, the thinking and taking walks, and even staring out the window. It’s all part of the process. And to be fully present with the work, she needed to give herself credit for that.

“I actually have this list of like 17 or 18 things that I can do in my office that count as marbles. They are not cleaning my office, cleaning the fork drawer, buying a better computer.  But they do include things like… the emergency ripcord is CFW.

“Yesterday, I was having a hard time getting back into the swing of things. I listened for an hour and a half to the Creative Engine workshop. While listening to that I realized, oh my gosh, at my end-of-year review I skipped the Collect phase. I went straight from Reflect to Decide and I didn’t spend any time thinking about my criteria or my commitments or my capacity. And I was kind of like, huh.  That Collect phase brings me to the why, which then makes me realize, it’s not about the number of hours.

And that was a mind shift. It doesn’t matter if I have 10,000 marbles in the jar if the whole time I’m sitting in my office, I’m furious at myself. Or I’m not doing anything, really, because I’m watching the clock and thinking another hour, another hour, another hour.

It’s not about the number of hours. It’s about how you come to those hours. And creating space for—I call them my story elves, like the shoemaker and his elves. Where do those imaginative voices feel like they can step into the space? It’s usually not when the energy is up here in my head, and everybody’s screaming at me.

You might not think Quota Tasks are for you, but…

If you’re a tough taskmaster who defaults to hard internal deadlines, shame, and self-punishment to get the work done, you might think easing up on yourself like this could never work. How would you ever get anything done??

The opposite is true. In fact, Quota Tasks simply codify what we do anyway (when we’re not cramming and pulling all-nighters). We work on a thing for the amount of time we have available, and then we finish, or we don’t finish. (I’ve got a lot of …thoughts… about deadlines.)

The magic they offer is simply allowing you to take credit for the work you’re doing and feel great about it (even if you haven’t “finished”), instead of wallowing in self-blame and feeling like you’re always falling short.

That means you’re a lot more likely to feel good about your project, instead of letting it be poisoned by shame. And that means you’re more likely to come back to it, and keep putting in the hours, day after day.

Removing demands and saying “there’s no bar, no deadline, no expectations” can free you up to do the work — but only if you mean it. Sneaky expectations recreate the same pressure through the back door, as Shelley’s story demonstrates. The container of time for the work is the point, no output requirements attached.

Think about it: When you beat yourself up to do something, do you then do it?

No. You just have the painful experience of beating yourself up, feel more shame about the thing, and don’t do it anyway. As I wrote in an earlier post: if you wouldn’t beat your rescue puppy for failing to achieve perfection, why are you willing to do it to yourself? Punishment doesn’t motivate work. It makes you dread it.

Try it this week

It’s easy to test out Quota Tasks for yourself. Just pick one thing on your list that’s been sitting there, and swap the outcome-based task for a Quota Task:

• “Finish chapter 1” → “Write for 45 minutes”
• “Record podcast” → “Record for one hour”
• “Work on website” → “Spend 90 minutes on website copy”

In order to be able to “take credit” for your work, make sure you have some way to track your quotas. A simple Action Tracker like a star chart or a marble jar works. Or, put it on your to-do list and actually check it off when you do your quota.

See how many of your amorphous, long tasks you can turn into quotas so you can check them off and keep moving.

As you go, brainstorm what counts for your project. Beyond the obvious output tasks, take note of the thinking, the research, the walks where you’re turning something over, and give yourself credit for those too.

This is the structural basis of a creative work habit. You return to small, repeatable containers of time and take the next small step, without setting up barriers in the form of specific outcomes, deadlines, or even concrete expectations.

Where do Quota Tasks fit in the Creative Engine?

Quota Tasks are a key tool for creating a Flexible Container, the planning methodology for your creative work that’s designed to bend without breaking. The Flexible Container is itself the core of the Act phase of the Creative Engine, the four-phase system for finishing your most important self-generated work. If you want to understand how Quota Tasks fit into a full project plan, those are your next stops.

And if you want to put the full system into action, check out the Creative Focus Workshop.

And if you’re still struggling to get those quotas done?

Check yourself: Have you assigned protected time for them? You can put quotas on your list all day long, but if you don’t have the capacity, or if you haven’t assigned a chunk of your capacity to those quotas, they still won’t happen. If your creative work keeps getting bumped by everything else, you need to Pay Yourself First.

Quota Tasks will help you get the work done, but their bigger promise is that you stop treating your creative work like a hair shirt, and start treating it like a practice that defines you. When you show up for your work and for yourself consistently, you won’t need deadlines, word counts, or anyone holding a sword over your head. And you will finish, on your own terms.