Increments

Today my life happens in small segments. Though my wife and I have put a great deal of thought into how our schedule is structured to maximize our ability to work distraction free, there’s only so much we can do without taking time away from our children and each other and the many things that need to be done to keep the house running smoothly. It feels like I’m in this mode of constantly jumping from one thing to the next. This is a problem for me because I thrive when I see great progress made on whatever project I’m working on, and I become discouraged when it seems like I haven’t really made a dent.

Little Ben Builds a Fence

When I was 11 years old I lived in Southwestern Colorado on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. It was so remote that when it snowed a lot, sometimes the snow plow wouldn’t make it out to us and we had to shovel out a 1/4 mile stretch of road that led out to the main road. During the warmer months we ALWAYS had some project to work on. One particular spring we were preparing to get some cattle and we had to install a fence that would stretch from near our house to the edge of our property (about 3/4 mile). We had about an hour to work on it each day after school before dinner time. I remember digging the first post hole. It was really hard work and took longer than I thought it should. When I finally finished digging we put in the post, packed in the dirt, and attached the barbed wire. Then we put in the second post, attached the barbed wire and for a brief moment I felt very accomplished and reveled in my work, for what stood before me slightly resembled a fence… then I looked over at the stack of posts and rolled barbed wire, and at the far edge of our property and my heart sank a little. We worked at a pace of about 1 post every 10 minutes, so when it was time to finish up for the day, it didn’t look like we had done much. By the end of that week we were about halfway there. When we got to the weekend, we were able to knock out the last half in about 5 hours. That’s the kind of progress I like to see. It was so exciting to see such great progress in one day after having been subjected to such slow progress during the previous week… but without the incremental progress we had made during the week that got us halfway there, there’s no way we would have been able to finish the fence that day.

Same Problem, Different Mind

What I learned (and am still learning) from that experience is that even small progress is progress. Every step, small as it is, brings me closer to the finish line. Now in circumstances where I rarely get to experience the charge that comes from making a huge dent on a project, I am faced with a choice: I can feel discouraged and mope about how I never have enough time to see the results I want to see, or I can change my mindset and my expectations. I can’t change my reality, but I can re-frame my mental approach to working on projects. I’m finding that I am able to get a lot done when I allow myself to feel the accomplishment of completing each of those small, incremental portions, knowing that all of those small steps will eventually lead me to a finished project.

Projects and Tasks

On a practical note, something that has been extremely helpful for me is to break my project down into several tasks and sub-tasks and put a time expectation on each one… So on Fridays, when I’ve finally gotten the twins down for their nap and I have exactly 15 minutes before I need to start the next load of laundry, I can find one of my “15 minute tasks” and work on that one. Or maybe I have a 30 minute task that I can break down even further to fit a portion of it into the time I have available. Then when I’ve finished a task (and this is important) I cross it off. Every time I cross something off it feels like progress… it IS progress.

A Reason to Succeed

This is still hard for me… honestly there are weeks when I do really well and weeks when I don’t. I am committed to the process though, because I find that when I’m not trying things and testing out new ideas for my work flow, I too easily allow the people in the boat with me to become an excuse. I don’t want them to be an excuse. I want them to be an inspiration… a reason to succeed. I hope this finds you wherever you are along the fence, and gives you the encouragement you need to work and finish your project, post by post.