You’ve been talking about it for months. You’ve been obsessing about it for years. Every so often, it comes back into your mind, and you want to tackle it, but it just seems too big. The entirety of the project seems too great.
So, you just quit.
Well, you just put it off.
Because the things you are really passionate about, you can’t get away from. They keeping sneaking back into your sub-conscious.
The room you want to renovate.
That business you want to start.
That book you always wanted to write.
It’s those things you can’t do in an afternoon, and because of that, they never get done.
Then someday you realize that you have been talking about doing it for way too long. Where do you start?
You start a big project by grouping its completion into medium sections and smaller tasks.
Does that seem too simple? Maybe. But if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, you might think about giving it a try.
Here are the steps I try when overwhelmed by a project:
- Do a brain dump of everything required of the project.
- I recommend doing it on a tactile surface – a whiteboard, a notepad, a napkin. Something you can touch.
- Section it into medium categories. What goes with what?
- Break those categories down into smaller tasks.
- Take those smaller tasks and put them into your to-do list with deadlines.
- Form a realistic timeline of completion of the entire project by marking out how long each step will roughly take.
- Celebrate because it got done.
If you have been putting that project off for way too long, take some time to get all that is required out there, and then take another step.
And then another.
And then a few more.
And then you are done.
Stop talking about it, make some diligent plans, and get going in what you are passionate about doing!
The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.
Proverbs 21:5
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.