Making Enormous Tasks Manageable

My goal with Living Every Minute is to teach people how to create spectacular in their life and business. Luckily, I have Tracy here to manage everything that I cannot. We want to bring the best teachings and the best stories from around the world to our tribe. In order to do that, we must learn how to reach more people, how to affect more lives. It is an overwhelming task for both of us but particularly for her since she is doing the lion’s share of the work. I helped her to understand some skills I have learned to implement when you have a humongous project. I hope they will help you as well.

First: Break it into sections.

What are the things that you can accomplish in smaller bites?  For example, we are opening an education Clinic this year. There are about 200 steps to getting it open. In order to make it more manageable, I started thinking about what each of the steps was and how long each thing would take. I then tried to set aside that time for each of the steps. In the case of Living Every Minute, it involves things like building a list, understanding the online industry, creating a product, and defining who we are going to be. We are deciding how to best serve our tribe and team.

Second: Put the steps in a logical order.

Obviously, with the education Clinic, some things make sense before others. I thought the most important thing was to find the right director.  This is important since it is an industry I don’t know; I need someone who has the skill set to make it successful. I also needed to remodel the building. I made those my priorities over everything else for the first quarter. In Living Every Minute, we have decided on understanding how to build an email list and creating the products as our priority. There are a million other things we could be doing but these are the priority.

Third: Put time on the calendar to accomplish the most important things.

It is easy to get caught up in the day today. Check your email one more time, post something on Facebook, organize your desk, check your email. The key to success with a big project is to make yourself get after it! You must put it on the calendar and then stick to it. The best way for me to do this is to take Steven Covey’s advice and plan weekly.  What are the most important 2-3 things I could do this week to advance this along? To kick the can. Once I have defined those, I put them on the calendar. Create times and days like an appointment. Don’t just put it on the to-do list, actually schedule it. Tracy is scheduling time each week to master list building and email marketing. It is the best way we can impact lives. We are setting time aside every week to understand the state laws etc., involving child care.

Finally: Follow through.

Have the internal integrity to do what you said you were going to do.  Avoid all distractions when it comes time to do it and sit down and get-er-done. It is amazing what momentum will do.  Force = Mass × Acceleration. In order to have the force and if you don’t have mass (large size) you must use massive action to move the needle. You will always overestimate what you can do in a week but if you keep at it, if you plan it, if you chunk it down, schedule it, and follow through, you will be amazed what you can accomplish in a year.

Living Every Minute,

Dr. Tim