Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is that by breaking big goals into doable steps,
Speaker 1: you can do more than you think. War and Peace
Speaker 1: has three hundred sixty one very short chapters. Read one
Speaker 1: a day, and you'll read the book in a year.
Speaker 1: Over the years, one of my most useful insights into
Speaker 1: time has been that we often overestimate what we can
Speaker 1: do in the short run, but underestimate in the long run.
Speaker 1: People create fifty item to do lists for a random
Speaker 1: Tuesday and then feel like miserable failures when they don't
Speaker 1: get through them. And yet seemingly huge goals can involve
Speaker 1: doing very little on any given day. An example I
Speaker 1: often use on this podcast is writing a book. An
Speaker 1: eight word manuscript seems very long, but if you plan
Speaker 1: to work two hundred forty days in a year, that's
Speaker 1: about three thirty three words a day for a finished draft.
Speaker 1: We are already a hundred fifty words into this episode.
Speaker 1: You could knock this out while your coffee is brewing
Speaker 1: in the morning. Or consider distance running. Being able to
Speaker 1: run twenty plus miles at a time seems daunting to
Speaker 1: someone who's just managed to run her first full mile,
Speaker 1: But if you add a mere half mile each week
Speaker 1: to your longest distance, you'd be marathon ready by the
Speaker 1: end of the year. Many people claim to have no
Speaker 1: time to read, but if you could find fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: every day, maybe scattered in those bits of time while
Speaker 1: waiting for meetings to start or for lunch to heat
Speaker 1: up in the microwave, you could read ninety one hours
Speaker 1: in a year. Since a lot of popular book take
Speaker 1: around four hours to read, this is more than twenty
Speaker 1: books in a year, not bad at all for what
Speaker 1: would otherwise be wasted time. Or you could even aim
Speaker 1: for something more ambitious. Jeremy Anderberg, who runs a popular
Speaker 1: newsletter devoted to reading, is doing a project this year
Speaker 1: called the Big Read, or he leads a group through
Speaker 1: reading War in Peace. This doorstop of a book is huge.
Speaker 1: The copy I'm looking at right now has fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: fifty five pages, but Tolstoy, bless him, elected to write
Speaker 1: this book in three hundred sixty one short chapters. You
Speaker 1: can do the math. Each one is just four pages
Speaker 1: or so that can be read in under ten minutes.
Speaker 1: As long as you keep going, you will be done
Speaker 1: with War in Peace by late December, without even trying
Speaker 1: to find gobs of time in life, we can do
Speaker 1: so much with the approach of one chapter a day.
Speaker 1: Each day, we can do very small things, sometimes almost
Speaker 1: imperceptible things. We keep our expectations very low. But when
Speaker 1: we meet those expectations again and again, and when we
Speaker 1: just keep going, we can write books, run marathons, and yes,
Speaker 1: conquer War in Peace and still have a lot of
Speaker 1: time left over. So what big goals are you looking
Speaker 1: to accomplish? One chapter at a time, break it down,
Speaker 1: stick with it, and you'll be amazed at what you
Speaker 1: can do in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Hey everybody,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
Speaker 1: your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod
Speaker 1: that's B the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: Podcast at i heeart media dot com that Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: I look forward to staying in Touch Before Breakfast is
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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