Elephant Eating

HOW do you eat an elephant? An old question beloved of many managers.

The answer is deceptively simple – why, one bite at a time of course.

Many jobs seem large so we just put off doing them, usually by justifying to ourselves we need a good amount of time to get stuck in.

Well guess what? That time never seems to arrive as we find lots of other – and smaller – things to do first.

So let’s make our big job a series of small jobs instead.

Look at what has to be done and break it down into a set of smaller, and much less intimidating, tasks.

So maybe you have a year of filing to do and you know it is a full day of work ahead of you. And you do not want to do it, even though you need documents from in that pile.

Well, try doing a preliminary sort into loose categories – bank statements, utility bills, vehicle documentation etc.

Job done. Easy.

Next job might be to tackle the bank statements – into order and into a file.

Job done. Not hard.

Next job might be the utility bills – into type, then order.

Sorted. Quite literally.

Maybe you still do all this in one go, maybe over time, but all of a sudden the big scary pile in the corner of the office is not so frightening – and a new habit is established.

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