Pieces of advice for those who can never start a project, those who think there's always too much to do.
I was idle this afternoon and i thought i could clean up a bit.
Watching my appatment in its entirety, with that layer of dust in every room, the many stains on the mirors, the windows, and the tiles, plus all the other kinds of dirt, i was already losing my motivation, seeing all the little details of a bigger picture put together, at once i imagined the amount of work there was, and that was frightening.
And i know my brain functions like that toward everything in life, when i have a project, even something i really want to achieve, i tend to think about everything, every obstacles i would have to overcome, every steps, all put together, and in the end it's too much and i give up.
So here this afternoon in front of my vacuum cleaner i had an illumination, some idea that i had to try because i never thought about a project that way before, i thought : "what do i want?", clean the dust in my appartment, so ok that's a goal, let's forget about the whole picture and start with what is for me the first step, with only one room in mind, the smallest, my bathroom (and if this is too much i would know it for the next time and i would adapt and pick something even smaller, learning by experience, but that's not the time to think about the next cleaning moment isn't it, let's focus on this one).
So instantaneously standing up in the frame of my bathroom and watching the floor, the task didn't seem so enormous and impossible anymore.
So i did that, i cleaned the whole bathroom floor, i focused only on that small room, it was easy.
Then once i was satisfied, i thought : "Ok so what's the next step toward my main goal?", one question at a time, let's pick another room, and i focused all my attention only on that next room, and so on, that was so easy, and i didn't clogged my mind with too many questions and imaginary obstacles, projections and stuff, i focused on one step at a time.
And i believe this is the way to go, to achieve anything, and it can be adaptable for anyone, we can reduce the amount of work for each step, for example i could have decided that i focus and clean only one tile at a time, and only think about the next tile when i'm satisfied of my work with the previous one, this goes to every project, one step at a time, even if you want to become a Rocket engineer (there will be many more steps than cleaning an appartment but by focusing on one at a time it becomes less impressive).
There's another little thing i want to add, we must have only one question in mind, one focus, one task, to do it well, but let's imagine i was cleaning up and my vacuum cleaner gets stuck behind some furniture while i'm trying to reach a spot to clean in a corner, it would be incorrect and destructive to force and haul on the wire trying absolutely to finish the cleaning, in such a situation i have to recognize that some new factor occured hindering me to achieve success in my current step, so i have to refocus my priority task, take the time to stop and solve that one problem that happened, so here i would have turned off my vacuum cleaner and calmly took the time to unstuck it before continuing to finish the step i was on.
Ok i don't know if i'm very clear, but i felt this is a very important realization for me, and i guess not too many people are conscious of this process, probably some minds are already functioning that way naturally but i had to make myself conscious of it to make me go forward.
Have a good day.
I enjoyed this story and I completely agree, in order to achieve a goal we have to focus on one step at a time. I am the same way, when I want or need to reach a goal I think of all the little steps it requires to accomplish. Like you, thinking of all the little things for the entire picture is overwhelming. Your process is definitely logical and makes most sense, focus on one part of the project with the main goal in the back of your mind.
RépondreSupprimerToday I felt this way at work, because I needed to complete a complex project by the end of the day (what would normally take me at least 2 days if I worked in a relaxed pace). I felt the way you described, thinking of the desired result and all the steps I need to do to make it happen made me feel overwhelmed. But then, I organized myself and focused on one step at a time. I found ways to quicken each step without losing the quality of the work, so in the end I finished it by the end of the day.
Well, that's a little story I wanted to share. I notice others rarely comment on your page. I feel I am your biggest fan :)