WEBVTT - Big goals, little steps

0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:06.200
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:12.760
<v Speaker 1>Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:16.160
<v Speaker 1>This is the second episode in my five part series

0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:20.480
<v Speaker 1>on procrastination. Today's tip is to conquer a task you've

0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:25.239
<v Speaker 1>been resisting by breaking it into very small steps. There's

0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:27.920
<v Speaker 1>been a lot written about success over the years, but

0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.280
<v Speaker 1>I think one of the most profound insights is this

0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:36.479
<v Speaker 1>small things done repeatedly truly do add up. As the

0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:42.400
<v Speaker 1>poet Ofvid once put it, dripping water hollows stone. Later

0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:46.320
<v Speaker 1>writers added their addendum to this quote, not by force,

0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:50.840
<v Speaker 1>but by persistence. If you think about it, the Grand

0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.599
<v Speaker 1>Canyon is the result of a river subtracting just a

0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:57.240
<v Speaker 1>little bit from the hills at a time. Lots of

0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:01.280
<v Speaker 1>little steps can yield big results. Say you want to

0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:05.080
<v Speaker 1>write a book, well right, five hundred words a day,

0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:09.040
<v Speaker 1>four days a week. Five hundred words isn't much of anything.

0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:12.240
<v Speaker 1>The script for this episode is longer than five hundred words,

0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:15.639
<v Speaker 1>But two thousand words a week gives you fifty thousand

0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:19.560
<v Speaker 1>words in six months. You'll get seventy five thousand words

0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.560
<v Speaker 1>in nine months. I write books for a living, and

0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:26.560
<v Speaker 1>I don't come anywhere near that level of output. Learning

0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:29.920
<v Speaker 1>a language seems like a huge undertaking, but it's not

0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:34.479
<v Speaker 1>an endless undertaking. According to the Foreign Service Institute, an

0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.520
<v Speaker 1>English speaker could reach general proficiency with a language such

0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:41.039
<v Speaker 1>as Spanish, French, or Italian in about six hundred hours

0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:44.720
<v Speaker 1>over two years. That's less than an hour a day.

0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.480
<v Speaker 1>Working with a language app during your commute and then

0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.080
<v Speaker 1>meeting a native speaker for lunch once every other week

0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:55.720
<v Speaker 1>could get you there. This insight is important for procrastination

0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.160
<v Speaker 1>because often when we resist a task, it's because it

0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:04.600
<v Speaker 1>seems big, a nebulous, or possibly scary. This insight is

0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:08.320
<v Speaker 1>important for procrastination because often when we resist a task,

0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:13.280
<v Speaker 1>it's because it seems big, a nebulous, or possibly scary.

0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:16.280
<v Speaker 1>Get a new job, go back to school, start a business,

0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:20.320
<v Speaker 1>start a nonprofit, meet someone special. All of this might

0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:24.120
<v Speaker 1>be amazing, but life's pretty busy right now. How about

0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:28.400
<v Speaker 1>next year or the next decade. One way to conquer

0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:32.000
<v Speaker 1>this resistance is to break the task down into tiny,

0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:37.760
<v Speaker 1>doable steps. Let's say you're procrastinating writing a report. Break

0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.760
<v Speaker 1>this down into tasks so small that you feel no

0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:46.000
<v Speaker 1>resistance to them, Like right, the title Okay, that's not

0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:48.120
<v Speaker 1>so hard. I mean, who's bent out of shape by

0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.200
<v Speaker 1>typing the title. Then maybe another step is writing down

0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:55.280
<v Speaker 1>the main point. You want to make one sentence, what

0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.720
<v Speaker 1>is this report about? Hopefully you know, because that's how

0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.400
<v Speaker 1>you're describing it to people. So you write that one

0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:06.560
<v Speaker 1>sentence down, just one sentence. That wasn't bad at all.

0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:10.200
<v Speaker 1>Then maybe another step is including three data points you

0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:13.120
<v Speaker 1>know are important. Okay, we'll get those in there. Oh

0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.239
<v Speaker 1>and then here's something interesting we could say to connect

0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:17.760
<v Speaker 1>the main point in those data points. Oh and by

0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:19.080
<v Speaker 1>the way, I know, this is how I want to

0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.160
<v Speaker 1>sum up and explain those data points. And next thing,

0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:26.000
<v Speaker 1>you know, the momentum is there, and the report is

0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:29.600
<v Speaker 1>pretty much written. And here's the crazy thing. If you

0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.440
<v Speaker 1>start early enough, you don't even have to do all

0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.240
<v Speaker 1>of this on the same day. It never has to

0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:37.200
<v Speaker 1>be unpleasant, and you never have to feel like there's

0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.920
<v Speaker 1>too much to do, because all these steps are small

0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:42.200
<v Speaker 1>enough that you just don't feel like it's a big deal.

0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:44.600
<v Speaker 1>If you do feel like it's a big deal and

0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.920
<v Speaker 1>you start feeling that resistance, back up and make the

0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:53.520
<v Speaker 1>steps smaller. But I promise that progress is inherently motivational

0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:56.600
<v Speaker 1>We overestimate what we can do in the short run,

0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.480
<v Speaker 1>but we underestimate what we can do in the long run.

0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.320
<v Speaker 1>Even a nebulous project like meeting someone special could be

0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.360
<v Speaker 1>done in small steps. You aim to go on one

0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.840
<v Speaker 1>first date a week. That's not so bad, just one

0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.800
<v Speaker 1>coffee date. It's not too much of an investment of time.

0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:17.400
<v Speaker 1>But for every four first dates you might meet someone

0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:19.840
<v Speaker 1>you want to go on a second date with, maybe

0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:22.240
<v Speaker 1>one out of every three second dates turns into a

0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.360
<v Speaker 1>third date. In a year, you would have met four

0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:27.280
<v Speaker 1>people you were willing to go on three dates. With

0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:30.360
<v Speaker 1>the odds that one of those turns into something bigger.

0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:35.120
<v Speaker 1>It's pretty good. So today, think about some task that

0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.000
<v Speaker 1>you've been putting off. Think about how you could break

0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.640
<v Speaker 1>it up into tiny steps. Think about making those steps

0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.480
<v Speaker 1>so small that they're really just a little better than nothing.

0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.440
<v Speaker 1>If writing five hundred words a day is too much,

0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:50.320
<v Speaker 1>right two hundred. I bet you sent two hundred words

0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:55.120
<v Speaker 1>of emails by eight thirty am. But almost nothing isn't

0:04:55.720 --> 0:05:00.360
<v Speaker 1>actually nothing, and a little bit of something, done over

0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.440
<v Speaker 1>and over again can move mountains over the long haul.

0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.480
<v Speaker 1>What big project have you broken into tiny steps? I'd

0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:12.320
<v Speaker 1>love to hear about it. You can email me at

0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:16.719
<v Speaker 1>Before Breakfast podcast at I heart media dot com. In

0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:21.039
<v Speaker 1>the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's

0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:28.880
<v Speaker 1>to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd

0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.320
<v Speaker 1>love to hear from you. You can send me your tips,

0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:35.040
<v Speaker 1>your questions, or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter,

0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:40.880
<v Speaker 1>Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's B the

0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:45.200
<v Speaker 1>number four, then Breakfast p o D. You can also

0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.640
<v Speaker 1>shoot me an email at Before Breakfast podcast at i

0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.720
<v Speaker 1>heeart media dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled out

0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.480
<v Speaker 1>with all the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward

0:05:54.520 --> 0:06:02.680
<v Speaker 1>to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of

0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.080
<v Speaker 1>I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,

0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:10.080
<v Speaker 1>visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:11.440
<v Speaker 1>you listen to your favorite shows.