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: This is the second episode in my five part series
Speaker 1: on procrastination. Today's tip is to conquer a task you've
Speaker 1: been resisting by breaking it into very small steps. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot written about success over the years, but
Speaker 1: I think one of the most profound insights is this
Speaker 1: small things done repeatedly truly do add up. As the
Speaker 1: poet Ofvid once put it, dripping water hollows stone. Later
Speaker 1: writers added their addendum to this quote, not by force,
Speaker 1: but by persistence. If you think about it, the Grand
Speaker 1: Canyon is the result of a river subtracting just a
Speaker 1: little bit from the hills at a time. Lots of
Speaker 1: little steps can yield big results. Say you want to
Speaker 1: write a book, well right, five hundred words a day,
Speaker 1: four days a week. Five hundred words isn't much of anything.
Speaker 1: The script for this episode is longer than five hundred words,
Speaker 1: But two thousand words a week gives you fifty thousand
Speaker 1: words in six months. You'll get seventy five thousand words
Speaker 1: in nine months. I write books for a living, and
Speaker 1: I don't come anywhere near that level of output. Learning
Speaker 1: a language seems like a huge undertaking, but it's not
Speaker 1: an endless undertaking. According to the Foreign Service Institute, an
Speaker 1: English speaker could reach general proficiency with a language such
Speaker 1: as Spanish, French, or Italian in about six hundred hours
Speaker 1: over two years. That's less than an hour a day.
Speaker 1: Working with a language app during your commute and then
Speaker 1: meeting a native speaker for lunch once every other week
Speaker 1: could get you there. This insight is important for procrastination
Speaker 1: because often when we resist a task, it's because it
Speaker 1: seems big, a nebulous, or possibly scary. This insight is
Speaker 1: important for procrastination because often when we resist a task,
Speaker 1: it's because it seems big, a nebulous, or possibly scary.
Speaker 1: Get a new job, go back to school, start a business,
Speaker 1: start a nonprofit, meet someone special. All of this might
Speaker 1: be amazing, but life's pretty busy right now. How about
Speaker 1: next year or the next decade. One way to conquer
Speaker 1: this resistance is to break the task down into tiny,
Speaker 1: doable steps. Let's say you're procrastinating writing a report. Break
Speaker 1: this down into tasks so small that you feel no
Speaker 1: resistance to them, Like right, the title Okay, that's not
Speaker 1: so hard. I mean, who's bent out of shape by
Speaker 1: typing the title. Then maybe another step is writing down
Speaker 1: the main point. You want to make one sentence, what
Speaker 1: is this report about? Hopefully you know, because that's how
Speaker 1: you're describing it to people. So you write that one
Speaker 1: sentence down, just one sentence. That wasn't bad at all.
Speaker 1: Then maybe another step is including three data points you
Speaker 1: know are important. Okay, we'll get those in there. Oh
Speaker 1: and then here's something interesting we could say to connect
Speaker 1: the main point in those data points. Oh and by
Speaker 1: the way, I know, this is how I want to
Speaker 1: sum up and explain those data points. And next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, the momentum is there, and the report is
Speaker 1: pretty much written. And here's the crazy thing. If you
Speaker 1: start early enough, you don't even have to do all
Speaker 1: of this on the same day. It never has to
Speaker 1: be unpleasant, and you never have to feel like there's
Speaker 1: too much to do, because all these steps are small
Speaker 1: enough that you just don't feel like it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: If you do feel like it's a big deal and
Speaker 1: you start feeling that resistance, back up and make the
Speaker 1: steps smaller. But I promise that progress is inherently motivational
Speaker 1: We overestimate what we can do in the short run,
Speaker 1: but we underestimate what we can do in the long run.
Speaker 1: Even a nebulous project like meeting someone special could be
Speaker 1: done in small steps. You aim to go on one
Speaker 1: first date a week. That's not so bad, just one
Speaker 1: coffee date. It's not too much of an investment of time.
Speaker 1: But for every four first dates you might meet someone
Speaker 1: you want to go on a second date with, maybe
Speaker 1: one out of every three second dates turns into a
Speaker 1: third date. In a year, you would have met four
Speaker 1: people you were willing to go on three dates. With
Speaker 1: the odds that one of those turns into something bigger.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. So today, think about some task that
Speaker 1: you've been putting off. Think about how you could break
Speaker 1: it up into tiny steps. Think about making those steps
Speaker 1: so small that they're really just a little better than nothing.
Speaker 1: If writing five hundred words a day is too much,
Speaker 1: right two hundred. I bet you sent two hundred words
Speaker 1: of emails by eight thirty am. But almost nothing isn't
Speaker 1: actually nothing, and a little bit of something, done over
Speaker 1: and over again can move mountains over the long haul.
Speaker 1: What big project have you broken into tiny steps? I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear about it. You can email me at
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast podcast at I heart media dot com. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can send me your tips,
Speaker 1: your questions, or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's B the
Speaker 1: number four, then Breakfast p o D. You can also
Speaker 1: shoot me an email at Before Breakfast podcast at i
Speaker 1: heeart media dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled out
Speaker 1: with all the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward
Speaker 1: to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.