Want To Get Something Big Done? Start Small.

“However, before satisfaction would be mine, first things first.  Wiggle your big toe.”  Toe wiggles.  “Hard part’s over.” – Kill Bill, Vol. 1

Why do the French have small breakfasts?  Because one egg is un oeuf.

So, this was the topic that was originally scheduled for Friday – you can tell it has a much more “Friday” feel. Back to the usual schedule on Wednesday.

Sometimes starting something is the hardest part.  When you look at the time and effort that I’ve put forth on this blog over the last three years, it’s been several thousand hours.  If I had to confront that level of sweat on day one it would have been daunting.

“Do I want to put that my life and energy into it?”  But every great effort starts with something small.

I was reading Scott Adams’ book, Loserthink, the other day.  The book goes through dozens of topics.  I recommend it even though I haven’t figured out how to get Scott Adams to pay me to recommend it.

One of the (many) stories that Mr. Adams relates is that he has a formula that he used when faced with something large that he’d like to try.  Think of the absolute smallest thing you could do to start.  Then?  Take that small action.  Start.  Do it.

There is an invisible presence, which reviews our actions, passes judgement, and decides who lives and dies.  But enough about the NSA.

When Mr. Adams decided he was going to start writing comics and become a world famous cartoonist, the step he took was to go to an art store and buy some high quality paper and ink.  How long did that take?  A few minutes.  But that first step was important.  Becoming a world famous cartoonist is hard, and requires thousands of hours of effort.  But buying some paper is easy.  Now, making a toilet paper joke is hard:  I tried making a toilet paper joke at the start of the Coronavirus panic.  Nobody got it.

Adams talks about his preferred strategy to get out of bed when he doesn’t want to:  do the smallest movement possible.  “Wiggle your little finger.”  Once that action has been taken, you can move.  You’ve built up momentum, you can take the next step.  You’ve started with just a single ounce of motivation rather than having to chug an entire pitcher.

One alarm that always wakes me up?  Rumble strips.

I do something similar when the alarm rings and I just don’t want to get out of bed, The Mrs. doesn’t have this problem because I got her an alarm clock that swears at her.  Every morning she’s in for a rude awakening.  Me?  I think of the first three things I’m going to do, in detail.  They’re easy things.  Sit up.  Turn off the alarm.  Stand up.

Then I do them.

But by then, I’ve got momentum going, and I’ve already passed the toughest test of the day (so far).  I got out of bed.  I know that it’s the lowest level of achievement, probably somewhat similar to that friend of mine who was bragging he had a “participant trophy” wife, but it’s a start.

Heck, I even follow this strategy with each time I write a post.  I open up Word®.  It’s just selecting one icon and pressing.  It’s easy.  But I’ve started.  I then open up half a dozen or so tabs for making memes in a new window.  Then I start typing.  But having those small actions to prepare for the larger post (that can take hours to finish) gets me going.  It’s now automatic and almost a ritual.

The Aztecs had a wonderful motto:  “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everyone.”

This strategy even works for me on a far larger scale.  Years ago, one particular Thursday night I was at home with The Mrs.  I was planning on taking a vacation day on Friday.  We were enjoying a nice glass of wine while Pugsley and The Boy were upstairs asleep.  We’d kissed them goodnight, which is sweet.  There is nothing more wholesome than a goodnight kiss.  Unless you’re in prison.

I digress.  We were having wine downstairs . . . then the phone rang.

My boss was on the other end – there was an emergency at work, and they needed help.  I ended up working 12 hours a day for 45 days straight without a day off.  During that time, the sheer volume of work that I had to do was huge.

Every day, I started by making a list.  An exceptionally detailed list.  Why?

My chiropractor has just one thing on his to-do list:  get back to work.

There were hundreds of things to do.  By breaking them down to the forty or fifty that I needed to get done that day, I could focus on those items.  Without the list, I’d have been distracted by the sheer scale of stuff that needed to be done.  With the list, it gave me concrete tasks that I could do to get progress.

If I was overwhelmed?  I could just pick the next item.  It might not be the most important item.  But it kept me moving.

At the end of each day, I’d summarize the things we’d gotten done and the major things we had to do the next day.  The next morning?  Back to the list.

By breaking up big, complex tasks into small ones, it’s easy to get going.  Once I’ve got momentum up, the list often becomes irrelevant – I’m accomplishing everything on it, and only looking back to make sure I hadn’t missed something.

Vikings aren’t afraid of death.  As pagans, they know they’ll be Bjørn again.

It has been my experience that people are happiest when they are working on meaningful work at the edge of their ability.  But that kind of work is scary to start – the edge of ability means that failure is a real possibility.  Often, it’s hard to start because of that fear.

The solution?

Move your little finger.  And get going.