< Go Back How to Eat an Elephant Posted: May 19, 2016 One of the first steps to eliminating
procrastination is to break the task down in to bite-sized chunks. The reason is that the biggest trigger of
procrastination is when the task seems so large or demanding that it becomes overwhelming. When one big task seems a mammoth to
tackle a simple solution to make it seem easier on the mind is to break it down
into bite-sized chunks. For example, if
you are faced with having to start a big task which is likely to take you 4
hours to complete try breaking it up into (say) 12 x 20 minute bite-sized jobs. It's now much easier to start because you can
easily polish off a couple of 20-minute jobs and suddenly that impossibly large
task is started and well underway.
Once you've got started and made
some progress the feel-good factor kicks in and creates the psychological
effect of wanting to do more. Now that
mammoth task seems much more reasonable and very manageable. The trick is simply to concentrate on one
chunk at a time, get that done and then move on to the next one.
And the elephant? Just s tart
with a toe and then gradually eat it all, one chunk at a time!