Productivity Tip: Think Small

“Maintain a list of small, meaningful tasks that need doing – things like replacing a light bulb, writing a letter, or returning a phone call. Take out your list when you feel a slump coming on and take care of one of those tasks. You will be out of your slump by the time you have completed it. Why? Because you will have ‘stepped back’ to catch your breath. Plus, accomplishing even small tasks is energizing. Results are always good!”

– Bob Cox

Many people have a list of ambitious projects they plant to complete, such as:

• Write a best selling novel
• Run a marathon
• Create a Technorati top 100 blog
• Invest a large amount of money and live off the interest
• Donate a million dollars to charity

I’m a big believer in aiming high.  I read somewhere that most people underestimate what they can do in the long run.  However, they also overestimate what they can do in the short run. You can set humongous goals for yourself over the long haul, but in the short run, you need to keep things small.  Below you’ll find four ways to think small.

Break Big Projects into Small Action Steps

When you’re feeling overwhelmed by a large project you need to tackle, make your action steps smaller and easier. One clue that you need to break your goal into smaller chunks is when you find yourself procrastinating.  Procrastination is often caused by the feeling of being overwhelmed. By breaking big projects down into small action steps and doing at least one step a day, you can accomplish great things.  Here are three examples:

Writing a Novel

Harry Sinclair Drago was an American novelist who specialized in historical fiction set in the Southwestern States. He was a prolific author and over the course of his career he wrote short stories, screenplays, articles, and more than 100 novels. In fact, he wrote more than three full-length novels a year for 30 years. Once a reporter asked him: “How did you write over a hundred books?” And he answered: “Four pages a day”.

Going From a Couch Potato to Running a 5K

As another example of the importance of breaking projects down into small steps, “The Couch to 5K Running Plan” offers a running schedule that has helped thousands to get off the couch and run three miles in just two months. Josh Clark explains that a lot of people are turned off from running by trying to start too fast. They go out and jog for as long as they can endure right off the bat and wake up the next day with every ache and pain imaginable, wondering why on earth anyone would want to take up running.

If you go here and look at the running schedule provided, you’ll see that that it starts off the first day alternating just 60 seconds of jogging with 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes. Then gradually throughout the next nine weeks the jogging time is increased and the walking time is decreased, so that by the end of the two months you’re jogging for 30 minutes straight, which is basically the equivalent of three miles or 5 kilometers.  A person can go from couch potato to running a 5K in just two months by breaking down the task into small, doable steps.

Marketing Your Business

Suppose you want more clients for your business, but you’re not doing anything about it.  “Find new clients” is simply too large a task and you’re not sure how to tackle it.  Ask yourself: “What’s the first thing I need to do?” It could be: “Contact leads”. If this task still looks too large, you can make it even smaller: “Identify leads”. Another item you can add is “Look for networking events I can attend.”  You could also add “Identify former clients to re-contact and ask for referrals.”  These are examples of small, specific activities you can schedule and carry out, rather than staring blankly at the amorphous: “Find new clients”.

Micromovements – Make It Small Enough to Get You Going

If you’re having one of those days when you can’t get yourself to move, or there’s a project that you just can’t seem to get started, try micromovements.  I’ve written about this concept before, but I’ll go into more detail in this post: micromovements is a term coined by motivational writer SARK which consists of itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny movements. SARK explains that she’s a recovering procrastinator and perfectionist with a short attention span, so she invented micromovements as a method of completing projects in time spans of 5 minutes or less. She adds the following:

“All of my 11 published books, posters, cards and company exist due to many thousands and thousands of micromovements all strung together. I think of the micromovements as tiny colored beads that have helped me be someone who lives in her dreams instead of talking about them.”

For example, if she wants to write more letters, a good micromovement could be: “Tuesday 2pm, put stamps and paper and pen in same spot”. SARK adds that it’s important to write down each micromovement with a day and time. She also uses the project of creating a purple pillow to illustrate what the micromovements might look like:

1. Call Nancy Wed. 10am ask where she got the great purple fabric
2. Thu 11am, put fabric near sewing machine
3. Fri 4pm, draw two types of pillow ideas
4. Sat 2pm, assemble supplies for 5 minutes
5. Sun 5pm sew a pillow cover

Another example would be clearing out your basement of all the stuff that you’ve accumulated there over the years and turning it into an art studio. At first, the idea of sorting through all that stuff–deciding what to keep, what to donate, and what to throw out–, cleaning up the space, sprucing it up a bit, and moving in all of your art supplies might seem like an enormous project which you might never get around to.

One way to get through this project is to just take things one item at a time. On the first day just pick one item and decide what to do with it. Two or three days later you can go through a couple of more items, and so on, until you have the basement completely cleared out. If you follow this method it will probably take you awhile to get your art studio, but that’s better than never getting started because the task looks insurmountable if you don’t break it down into tiny steps.  Micromovements empower you to get started and to make slow, but steady progress.

Reward Yourself for Small Achievements

Small victories create psychological momentum. Matthew White, author of “‘The Confidence Bible: the Little Blue Book of Fearless Confidence” explains that the principle of using small wins to build psychological momentum was presented in a Ph.D. dissertation at Stanford University in 1977. When someone praises you, you feel good because your brain produces a chemical called dopamine. When you praise yourself by checking off a completed action step, you get the same physiological result. As you achieve one small win after another, you find it easier and easier to take the action steps that generate the wins.

Basically, it’s about applying Newtonian physics to your task list: if you can get yourself to start ticking off small items, you’ll be on a roll and will continue ticking off items.  In addition, giving yourself positive reinforcement after each small achievement will help you even more in keeping the momentum going.

The process to follow is this: break each task down into small action steps; make it easy to identify when you’ve completed each step; reward yourself for each achievement, even if it’s just by acknowledging and congratulating yourself each time you complete an item; repeat.

Kaizen – Continuous Improvement

Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that is based on making little changes on an ongoing basis: always improving productivity and effectiveness while reducing waste. It’s a soft, gradual method and the concept can be applied to any aspect of your life. For example, if you’ve identified several methods from Getting Things Done (GTD) that you would like to apply in your life, apply one method at a time. After a week or so you can begin to apply the next method you’ve identified, while continuing to apply the first method you mastered, and so on. This way, you’re making slow, continuous improvement to your organizational scheme and your productivity.

In addition, Kaizen is about creating systems and processes, and continuously tweaking these processes to get the best results and to reduce waste. One example is to create a morning routine and modify it slightly every few days to create improved results:

• Do you spend less time in the bathroom getting ready if you keep your shaving cream, tooth brush, and toothpaste on the bathroom counter instead of storing these items under the sink?
• What if you hang a hook by the door and make sure to always leave your keys there when you enter the house so you can easily find them in the morning when you’re leaving the house?
• What if you put coffee and water in the coffee maker the night before instead of doing it in the morning?
• What if you also put an umbrella stand by the door?

Anything can be improved continously: if you’ve created a web site and have monetized it using Google Adsense, one application of Kaizen is to make small changes in the page layout. Then proceed to measure the impact of these changes on how many people click on the ads. Keep making small modifications to the site, measuring the impact of each change you make, and seeing which ones increase your click rate.

Conclusion

Make things easy for yourself; set yourself up to succeed.  Break your projects down into small, manageable steps.  Create momentum by checking off small items from your list.  Congratulate yourself for each item you complete, however small. If there’s a project you’re resisting or if you’re just having a lazy day, allow yourself to move in micromovements.  Also, use the concept of Kaizen to make small, constant changes to your life so that you’re always on the road of continous improvement.  In order to achieve big, think small.

How do you apply the concept of thinking small to your life?

photo credit: macieklew

Related Posts:

• Productivity Tool: Mise En Place
• Four Ways to Achieve a Productive State of Mind
• Three Awesome Productivity Tips
• Increase Your Productivity By Learning to Manage Anger

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