When you break your large goal into smaller tasks and STILL feel overwhelmed!

Take a big goal and break it down into small tasks… that’s the advice everyone gives, and it’s supposed to make the big task feel LESS overwhelming. But what if it doesn’t help you? What if you break your big goal down and suddenly it feels like a huge mountain to climb? You just went from having one thing to do, to having thirty things to do!  We might have had a really big task on our list, but all our brains acknowledged was that it was only one thing! 

What does happen is our list of smaller tasks, is now much easier to ignore! See our blog post for the meme we mention in this episode!) We even feel like we’ve done something, we might even feel back in our comfort zone – we made a list, phew!

What we want you to remember is that when you’ve made your list, that moment of discomfort, is exactly when you need to HANG ON. The first question you might ask yourself is, now you’ve broken it down and see it in all its glory, how attached are you to this goal? This might be enough to put you off! It might make you realise now is not the time. Neither of these are bad things.

The process of breaking the goal down and deciding what to do next is about understanding the scale of the goal or project.  These are the things you will be able to do next once you have your goal broken down;

• You can decide the order in which you need to do things
• You can choose or decide what needs to happen first
• You can schedule future actions and goals
• You can set yourself opportunities for celebrating the things you’ve got done (to keep your motivation going!) 

Those are all skills that need developing, but how do we stop those feelings of being overwhelmed?

1. Ask for help
2. Commit to action 
3. Focus on the action not the result 
4. Be prepared to make an effort, and be OK with failing - listen to our Failing episode here and our Failing Be Afraid to Remain the Same episode here
5. Isolate one thing and put the big list out of sight 
6. Elevate the importance of the small tasks

Remember, celebrating your small achievements is how you keep your motivation high, a powerful weapon against the overwhelm of a big goal!

Read the full blog post over on our website.

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