Rushing to Success in Baby Steps
Lately, my girlfriend and I moved into our first apartment together, an exciting event for both of us. Even before we moved in, we had an image in our minds of how we want the apartment to look like and where everything should be placed. But when we wanted to put this image in practice, we couldn’t agree on the “how”. My girlfriend suggested to make all the preparations ahead of time, so we can set everything in place on the first day we move in. I on the contrary, suggested to set only the essential things we need to and then as time passes gradually improve it to match our image. It took me a while but I managed to convince her to follow my lead. Indeed, reality showed us that many of the items we wanted to buy were unnecessary or already exist in the apartment and on the other hand, we needed a lot of items that we didn’t even think about. So moving little by little saved us lots of money and even more important time.
This is just one example of a real life scenario (out of many more) where breaking a “big” task to baby steps was the key to success. Today’s reality is very dynamic and almost impossible to predict. We can’t plan a major change in our life/business/side-project (you name it) and accept it to go according the plan. And don’t get me wrong, it is very important to plan ahead of time, but we have to adapt. We have to measure our progress, look at the facts (don’t ignore them!) and change our plans accordingly. I try to use this strategy whenever I can and it made my life easier.
So in the next time you want to make a major change in your life (starting a startup, doing a big refactor to a legacy system, move out, whatever) try breaking it to baby steps to increase the chances to succeed.
