Take Small Consistent Steps

Have you ever started on a project only to get overwhelmed at how big or how long it will take you to get through it?

I have experienced this from time to time when reading big books, especially biographies. It's easy to get caught up in how long the damn book is and to have your self-talk suddenly trigger telling you that it will take what feels like an eternity to get through it.

When I was reading my first 'large' book (about 600 pages) it took me over a year to complete it because I kept leaving it for several months at a time and then coming back to it. The second large book however, only took me a few weeks to get through. The reason it took me much less time is because I was better at breaking down my reading sessions into much smaller and more manageable tasks.

I didn't let myself get overwhelmed when I looked at the whole book and how much further I had to go.

Not to sound cliche, but this is very similar to how life can be sometimes and it is very easy to look at certain tasks and to feel overwhelmed at the time investment needed. Sometimes it just feels like a huge book and when you look at it in it's entirety.

In these moments, remind yourself that even though there is a long way to go you are not expected to do it all at once.

"How will I possibly finish this WHOLE task?" you keep telling yourself. The key is to not view the task as a whole. Break everything down into bite-size chunks and everything begins to appear more manageable. Something that looks like it will take hours, days or weeks can instead be made into small and easy increments throughout your days.

An example of how this mindset is benefiting me right now is when we're building our bus. We have zero experience in any building or electrical work whatsoever and now we have to implement and execute a plan to build a small home inside a vehicle in just a few months.

We're learning everything via YouTube just days before we begin action on what we have just learned, and it would be very easy to look at how much work we actually need to do for this to be ready for the road and get overwhelmed. Everything has been broken down into bite-size steps - First the floor, then the framing on the walls, then the electrical etc....

The feeling you get when you finish even the first step is a massive sense of achievement and it feels that you have made a big dent in a large project.

It's the same with anything. Personal fitness would be another example where a lot of people just don't seem to have the patience to put in the work. They want results NOW. However, when they start and they begin to see incremental results over the first few weeks, even though they are still far from their goal, they get overwhelmed with excitement and that is enough to propel them forward.

Sometimes it just takes a shift in perspective and a bit of experience to recognize that most things you need to complete come down to the same set of principles.

Thank you for reading!

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