User blog:Taldin/Too Big To Succeed?

"There is no greater mistake than to try to leap an abyss in two jumps." -David Lloyd George

One of the biggest obstacles in my life is not doing something because it's too big to do. Like packing to move, or cleaning out the entire desk area, or doing an honest to goodness giant cleandown of the kitchen.

And yet I can do insane things like write 50K+ words worth of a novel every year, and I've just gotten done with a giant project that took five month of 7 day weeks. I look back and say, 'I did that.'  But at the front of the project, I said, 'that's impossible, no way.'

People say that the key is to break it down into smaller tasks; to bring friends to help share the load; to make smaller efforts one day at a time.

But like the quote at the top, there are some things that seem to me like 'you can't just do it a little bit at a time.'

As an aside, take the action of buying things. Very few things exist out there you can purchase a little bit at a time; people expect all of the money right then and there at the counter. It's only when you get into large purchases that people offer you an installment plan, where they benefit by charging you interest.

Task completion is a lot like that. Except, you know, 'time is money.'  If something seems like it will take up too much time, most folks won't even take on the task (purchase) it. Some folks are willing to do it on the installment plan, even though it requires a lot of sustained interest to continue doing so, or you default on the project and it never gets finished.

I think we need to identify, therefore, not just the idea of anything is possible given enough time and effort, but those things that need to be finished in full in a short period of time, versus ones you can break down into smaller tasks.

Our time is segmented into sections; minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. We take on one of our biggest 'long term investment projects' -- education -- from the day we get enrolled in school by our parents. But even school is broken down into installment plans, and some people check out early, for a lesser reward.

So when it comes to our Big Ideas/Projects that cost a mountain of time -- maybe we need to identify a lesser reward if we can't finish.

Instead of 'clean the whole back corner area, why not just break it down into 'clear your desktop off', 'empty the filing cabinet', 'get rid of the junk mail?'   Why see them as a giant task when you can re-measure, reallocate, and set boundaries for your projects?

Answer: because entropy wins, chaos does not sleep, and neither wind, nor hail, nor heavy snow can stop the flood of junk mail that comes into the house. And while you're doing one task, another is lying neglected. If I clean the desk, then I can't clean the bathroom. It becomes a choice; 'which one is nastiest today?'

"Ah, but you can make a schedule, set up a rotation..." the response is. Except life doesn't obey a schedule. I had a friend fly in from out of town this weekend, and I dropped my Saturday plans to go spend the day with them. (I have no regrets.)   But I'd made big plans to clean the house this weekend...

Life is about making the most of your time, but it's also about enjoying the time you have. Sure, you can have a spotless house, but if you spend one hundred and ten percent of your life keeping it that way, what do you give up?

It really comes down to instinctive choice. We shy away from things that are too big to attempt, because we fear failure. Probably because we've all had those big Ideas that turn into huge Projects that we never quite finish, despite our best intentions. And it becomes, 'oh, I don't want to do X, because remember when we tried to do Y?'

You can't let past failures stop you from succeeding in the present. Or you'll wind up only doing the easy things in life, and the hard things will stack up to the point of impossibility by sheer number, instead of size.

Life is short, yes. But some things just have to be done anyway.