Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
I’m not sure where I first heard that saying, but a few different variations of it are the titles of books on business management and leadership. The point is basically that even the most enormous of tasks can be achieved if you just break it down into small steps.
In this little analogy a blog is the elephant. Blogging is, at face value, a pretty easy thing to do. Doing it well, and being successful, are not so easy. In fact to a lot of bloggers feel like they’ve got an elephant on their plate and don’t believe that they can eat it.
If that sounds like you then here is three simple steps I want you to take right now.
- Get out a sheet of paper, or start a new Word document, whichever way you prefer making lists
- At the top, write “My Elephant”
- Spend the next 10 minutes, or however long it takes you to run out of ideas, writing down every single big and small thing you want to do with your blog
If you’re anything like me your list will be pretty long. I’ve got items as small as “Fix my 404 page” and as big as “Code PSD from designer into new Thesis custom theme”. But at least you now know how big your elephant is.
Now, decide how often you’re going to take a bite. I’ve decided three times a week. You might decide every day, once a week, or once a month. Its up to you. But starting taking bites, and keep at it.
And when you’ve taken a few bites, and that elephant is starting to look like you’ll be able to eat it all, come back and let me know. I’d love to hear how you’re going.
Note: no actual elephants will be harmed by doing this.
Image Credit: Flickr
About Paul Cunningham
Hi Paul,
That’s something that I do as well. I have a whole list of ideas for my site, (which keeps growing the more I learn) but have come to realize that while it all can’t get done in my one day, if I take it step by step, then I can ‘eat that elephant’ one task at a time.
Tackling such daunting tasks are easier when we break them down into manageable components. Anything can be accomplish one small step after another.
Karen
Pretty good analogy. We have some parallels there in terms of doing it. I do that every weekend and take a bite on weekdays. But of course it is tentative sometimes because I go to school and have to schedule it well.
Okay, I’m a vegan so I’m substituting elephant with an elevator! That’s pretty big too.
Anywho – awesome advice. I know it’s not some new idea but I needed this today – I’ve been spending too much time up late every night working on my blog. But now, thanks to you, I will do it in bite sizes.
You’re a wonderful teacher. This is the second time you’ve given me some very useful advice – I love the fact that it’s so simple that I feel stupid for not thinking of it on my own. Guess that’s why I’m the student!
Awesome suggestions here Paul! I do this to some degree right now but you have inspired to me to step it up! :)
Awesome title. It made me curious, and I was happy that it was all just an analogy, being a vegetarian and all :)
Great tips. I have a long list, but the problem is that I don’t set time to take one bit at the time. So, the list just continues to grow.
We’re often surprised at just how motivating it can be to take the time and tick off a few items from the list. Maybe just start by choosing one day of the week where all you work on is your list items. Give it a try.
Great post! I do a similar exercise when I have trouble thinking of the next action step that I should be taking towards my goal. Whatever it is I want to accomplish, I write down 20 things I could do to get there. When I get to number 20, I know that is the first thing that I should be doing because it is most likely the thing that I am putting off most. It really works for me.
Thats a great tip on working out the things you’ve been putting off the most.
I’m pretty late to this parade but…my life is so crazy and yet I will be launching a website/blog in one month. I finally decided a couple weeks ago that what I needed to do was to write down everything that I needed to do (that I could think of) for the next couple months in weekly “bites”…not just for my blog but for my life…my blog is just one part of that. It is working! And it helps me to feel a lot less stressed.
Good stuff Anne, like you say the technique works well not just for blogging but for everything that looks too big to deal with.
Hello there !
Very good analogy. I read your blog from Europe (here and there) and quite like it, alongside with Seth Godin, Copyblogger and Men with Pens.
To me, when we first see the huge elephant there is to eat, the first step is to take it down to a rhino. Let me explain that : when we see from a distance (like launching a new business), we have not defined the final shape of the animal, and we tend to see it a lot bigger.
First DEFINE the elephant, (as in “define” meaning “give a shape and limit in size”.
As time was passing during my company launching process, I found the 6 expertise areas were taken down to 3, then to 2 (hope 1 remains at least !). Same with social networks integration, advertising, and so on…
Quite a lot less to eat then :-)
Thats a great tip Pierre, thanks for sharing it.
Just to follow up regarding the “define before dinner” stuff, I believe that defining the bitesize is critical too. As it’s been said by Anne, a good way to eat the rhino (I stick to my former post) is also to avoid choking on huge bites or have thousands of bites that are exhausting.
To me, the right bitesize is the one that both :
- makes the rhino a reasonable number of bites
- makes the individual bite eatable in one shot (amount of time we can keep focused on a single task). Then cut off email, IM, phone… and eat !
“Bon appétit!” (from France)
Nice take on a problem many people face. Overwhelm is daunting at times.
My solution to this is to use Basecamp from 37signals. I use the todo lists to divide the stuff I want to do into different sections. They are blog posts, technical issues, functionality I want to address, marketing efforts, product creation, collaboration efforts etc.
I set times during the week when I work on each of the lists and try to tick off as many as I can of the tasks. I tend to write my blog posts in batches, and in my opinion these other tasks are also best done in batches as well.
Great blog – thanks for sharing!
I haven’t tried Basecamp myself but I always hear great things about it.
Well the great news is that I have been taking small bites out of the elephant and my new (Sept 09) blog has been nominated as best new garden blog at the mouse and trowel awards. Thank you for your kind words and wisdom..
Congratulations Robert. I confess I Googled “mouse and trowel awards” to make sure you weren’t pulling my leg ;-)
Well done.