Google Invented the Faffalot Strategy. Unfortunately, It’s Exactly What My Brain Can’t Do.

I Googled one of my own Faffalot blog posts and discovered something rather wonderful. Google has invented “The Faffalot Strategy to Avoid Distraction.”

Apparently, I have a strategy now. Who knew?

Even better, Google helpfully explained what the Faffalot Strategy involves. Its number one piece of advice was: “Write down every sub-task before starting.”

And I laughed, because that is almost exactly what Faffalot exists to save me from having to do.

If I Could Write Down Every Step Before I Started, I Probably Wouldn’t Need Faffalot

This is something I think a lot of conventional productivity advice gets wrong. When someone is struggling to get started, the advice is often to break the task down into smaller steps.

That sounds completely sensible. Take a big task. Work out everything that needs to happen. Break it into manageable chunks. Put those chunks in the right order. Decide where to begin. Then start. Lovely.

Except there is one fairly major problem. All of that is a task. In fact, for a brain that’s already overwhelmed, it can be an enormous task.

Before I’ve even begun the thing I’m supposed to be doing, I’m being asked to think through the entire process, identify all the component parts, decide what order they should happen in, write them all down and then somehow work my way through the resulting list.

If I could reliably do all of that when I was overwhelmed, I wouldn’t have spent decades wondering why perfectly ordinary tasks could feel so ridiculously difficult.

I Don’t Need the Whole Plan. I Need the Next Thing.

This is the distinction that eventually changed things for me. When I’m stuck, I don’t necessarily need to know everything I’m going to have to do. I need to know what to do next.

Not the next ten things. Not the entire project. Not every possible decision I’m going to encounter along the way. Just the next thing.

That’s the idea at the heart of Faffalot.

A normal to-do list might say “Order new blinds.” My brain looks at that and sees approximately 47 invisible decisions. Which window? What size? Inside or outside the recess? What type of blind? What colour? Where did I put the measurements? Which website should I use? How much do I want to spend? Do I need samples? What was I doing again?

And suddenly I’m doing something completely unrelated.

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know I needed new blinds. The list had already told me that.

The list told me WHAT to do. It didn’t tell my brain how to START.

The Blinds Were Actually a Perfect Example

The reason Google produced its rather magnificent “Faffalot Strategy” was because I’d written about ordering new blinds without getting distracted. I wrote that post while I was genuinely ordering the blinds, recording what was happening as I went.

And that matters, because the process wasn’t neat. I didn’t sit down beforehand and calmly produce a beautifully ordered list of every step required to purchase window coverings. I started. Then I dealt with the next thing. And then the next thing. When another little task appeared, I dealt with that when I reached it.

That’s much closer to how Faffalot works for me. It reduces the amount of the task my brain has to deal with at any one moment.

Planning Can Become Another Barrier to Starting

I think this is why I’ve struggled with so many productivity systems over the years. Some of them are brilliant systems, but they often require me to be good at the very things I’m struggling with in the first place.

Plan the project. Prioritise the tasks. Estimate how long they’ll take. Schedule them. Break them into subtasks. Review the list. Choose the most important one. Start.

By the time I’ve organised myself sufficiently to use the system, I could probably have done the thing. Or, more realistically, I’ve become overwhelmed by organising the thing and wandered off.

For some people, planning everything in advance is enormously helpful. For me, there are times when planning how to start becomes the thing stopping me from starting.

So What Is the Actual Faffalot Strategy?

If Google is going to give me a strategy, I feel I should probably be allowed to amend it.

The Faffalot Strategy is definitely not “write down every sub-task before starting.”

It’s much simpler: Don’t make my brain deal with the whole task when all it needs to deal with is the next step.

Sometimes I do know the steps in advance. If it’s something I do regularly, I can set them up once and use them again. Sometimes I add or change things as I go. Sometimes I just need enough structure to get myself moving.

The important part isn’t creating the perfect plan. It’s reducing the amount I have to think about right now.

Because once I’ve started, something changes. The impossible giant task isn’t an impossible giant task anymore. I’m just doing one small thing, then another, then another.

And somehow, eventually, I’ve ordered the blinds.

Google Was Wrong. But It Accidentally Explained Why Faffalot Exists.

I genuinely love that Google called this “The Faffalot Strategy.” I hope one day that phrase really does mean something.

But if it does, I’d like to make one small correction for the record. The Faffalot Strategy isn’t about becoming better at writing comprehensive lists, organising every detail or planning the entire journey before setting off.

I spent years trying to become the sort of person who could do that consistently. Faffalot came from trying something different.

I stopped asking my brain to manage the whole journey. I just gave it somewhere to start.

If your brain doesn’t need the whole plan either, Faffalot might help.

Faffalot shows you one step at a time, so you can focus on what to do next instead of everything that needs doing.

Try Faffalot free on the App Store