We all know how to eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time. It's great advice. I know it's great because my coach tells me this roughly every six months. She wouldn't keep saying it if it weren't important.
I don't know about you, but when I have to do ANYTHING that is elephant-sized, I will look for something smaller to do. It doesn't matter if it's too many things, too big a project, or simply something that makes me uncomfortable. I will seek out a low-hanging fruit and the feeling that I completed something. It's a sneaky kind of procrastination because I will have a lot of "progress" to show at the end of the day, even if I haven't gotten one step closer to the big thing I really want.
This is why we break things down into steps. If you have a 12-part project to work on, you need to figure out what order to do those parts. Which things depend on each other, and which things can be done in parallel? Which things can wait and which can't?
If I told brand new martial arts students that they were going to need to learn six forms, and almost 200 self-defense techniques to get from White Belt to Black Belt, many of them would never step on the mat. But when I tell them they will learn one new form and 15 to 20 techniques at each rank until they are black belt candidates, it becomes something that they can see themselves doing.
Break it down.
For a project:
What milestones along the way can you give yourself?
What things have to happen in order?
What things can happen in parallel?
What matters most?
For a problem:
What information don't I have that I need?
Who do I know that can help me get that information?
Who do I know who has overcome this problem? How did they do it?
What's one thing I could do to get closer to a solution?
And then, break it down again into smaller bites.
Find the first step, and then the next, and then the next. If you spend a little time planning, you will find yourself with bite-sized chunks that are much more manageable.
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