Do you find yourself needing to do something, but can’t bring yourself to do it because you’re so overwhelmed with the task? Does your task seem so huge that every time you think about it you just want to curl into a ball and hide?
Well it’s time to uncurl yourself, because I’m here to tell you a motivation technique you can try that can help!
And if it doesn’t help, you can always read my other post about ways to motivate yourself to find something that works for you. 😉
Overwhelmed? Break It Down!
To put it simply, when you’re overwhelmed with a task, break your task into smaller steps, and keep breaking those steps up into smaller and smaller steps until you finally find a step small enough that you believe you can do it. Then, try not to look at the whole picture at once, because that’s what can be so scary. Focus only on completing that small step.
Why Breaking It Down Works
Breaking tasks into smaller parts can reduce the monumental size of the task, especially if you make the effort to ignore the rest of the task while focusing on that little bit at a time.
This technique can also help you set mini goal posts where you can feel a sense of accomplishment for completing each tiny step. If you left it as a big task, then every little bit you do will seem like you’ve done nearly nothing in comparison to the entire thing. However, with these smaller goal posts, you can feel good about what you’ve done and reduce the negative feelings associated with doing what seems like nothing. It’s not nothing, it’s something!
Baby Steps
You may have heard of a technique like this before. Something like it was discussed in the movie, “What About Bob?” In the movie, the main character, Bob, is anxious about many things in his life, and struggles to get through even what most would consider simple tasks.
This video clip from the movie shows Bob struggling to get out of his house to go to an appointment. (apologies for the strange quality, it was all I could find on youtube)
While psychologists are not always portrayed realistically in movies, the advice the psychologist offers in this movie is great! He tells Bob to focus on taking what he calls Baby Steps. Instead of focusing on the entire overwhelming tasks, just focus on taking Baby Steps toward what you want to accomplish.
This video clip from the movie shows the advice the psychologist gives Bob about Baby Steps, and how it helps him:
How to Break Your Task Down
There are several ways different ways to break down your tasks, and you can do a mix of them all depending on what your task is:
- Break tasks down into chronological steps. Figure out which steps have to be completed before or after other steps. Focus your attention on the first step that must be done before all others.
- Break tasks down into smaller manageable pieces that don’t have to be done in any particular order. (If you can’t decide what to start on first, flip a coin, write the tasks on pieces of paper to pull out of a hat, or use a randomizer to choose for you.)
- Break tasks down by the amount of time you spend working on them. If your task is more ambiguous, you can focus on establishing chunks of time to work on it. Perhaps dedicate 1 hour to the task. Or 30 minutes. Even 5 minutes can be a great goal to set here. You might be surprised by how much you can accomplish in 5 minutes.
Some Examples
Example time!
Let’s say you have a messy house that you have to clean. Instead of thinking of the entire house in disarray and being too overwhelmed to even start that you end up just watching tv or youtube all weekend… try splitting it up into smaller tasks.
Instead of focusing on cleaning the whole house, split it up into cleaning different rooms, and pick a room to start with.
- Bedroom
- Kitchen
- Bathroom
- etc.
(If it’s hard to pick which room to start with, try using a random generator to select something for you.)
Let’s say you select to clean the bedroom, but it’s still too daunting of a a task because the room is an absolute wreck. That means it’s time to split the task up again. Splitting the room into sections:
- Bed
- Desk
- Floor
- Closet
- Bookshelves
- etc.
Now pick something to start on. Let’s say you pick the shelves, but it still seems too overwhelming, then limit yourself to only one shelf.
Still too much?
Half a shelf.
Still?
Pick a single item from the shelf that needs to be moved or cleaned.
Let’s say it has to be cleaned, so now you can consider: what do you have to do to clean it? Perhaps it has to be wiped with a damp cloth. If this still seems overwhelming, you can break it down into small steps too. This time we’ll try to break it into chronological steps:
- Get a cloth to wipe it with
- Take the cloth to a sink
- Dampen the cloth
- Bring the damp cloth back to the item
- Wipe the item down
Once you find a task small enough that you feel like you can actually do it, then by all means, do it!
Alternatively, you could also split the house-cleaning task up by the amount of time spent working on it. Like dedicate one hour a day to clean the house, and you can do anything you want in that chunk of time as long as it is part of cleaning the house. Or if an hour still seems daunting, just decide to clean for 5 minutes. After you clean for 5 minutes, feel good that you did that, and then see if you can do another 5 minutes.
A Few Last Words
When you complete any of these small steps, be sure to let yourself appreciate that you’ve accomplished something. You’re better off than you were before you even started this task! And by doing this exercise, you can build up the habit of splitting large tasks into smaller ones which may help you with even larger tasks in the future.
Sometimes once you get started on something, and do only a little bit of it, you find yourself willing to do a little more. It’s like you’re building up momentum. For example, if you broke your task all the way down to the point where your task is to take one physical step toward the sink, then once you take that step, you’ll likely find yourself inclined to take another, and then another, until you finally get to the sink, and eventually until you finally complete the task in its entirety.
What tasks do you have that seem too large to handle? Did this technique help you? Did you have another technique that helped you more? Let me know your experiences in the comments!
