How to Eat an Elephant

If someone tells you that you need to eat an elephant, how do you go about doing it? The answer is “one bite at a time.” A fundamental concept to keep in mind is that significant accomplishments are nothing more than a collection of many small tasks. The only way to accomplish big things is to take small actions, and automatically over time, a more substantial body of work will materialize.

While looking at the big picture you may feel paralyzed, not knowing where to start or what to do. There are so many different things to consider and so many tasks to tackle to realize a big piece of work that we can quickly become overwhelmed. It is very intimidating to think about big goals. Where does one even begin? We often find ourselves thinking about what we should do, wanting to get it right. We reflect. We plan. We strategize. We research. But none of those actions really help us eat the elephant. We need to take a bite. Then another. The key is to break it down into discrete chunks of work, and get started on one of those smaller actionable tasks. Once you have completed one of those actions, start on the next. Repeat.

Being able to distill a complex idea into straightforward and actionable tasks is an essential requirement to being able to deliver substantial impact and significant work. The natural tendency is to over-complicate which usually leads to uncertainty.

Complexity and uncertainty are the enemies of producing.

The most important thing that you can do is to take action. Do not sit and wait to be inspired; it simply is not going to happen. You may be uncertain and unsure of how to move forward. You need to get out of your head and just take a small action towards what you are trying to get done. It needs to be a real step though; not doing research, not planning. Concrete action. If you desire to develop a new game for the iPhone, then enroll in an application development course and start learning to code. If you want to build a dresser, then begin developing the plans. If you want to write a book, start writing.

Overcoming inertia is hard; this is basic science (we know it as Newton’s first law of motion). It is often hard to overcome inertia, to get started. But once you get going, you will find that it gets easier to continue. You may not know what the next step will be, and that is okay. You take the first step, and then you will see what action you should take next. The important thing is to move towards your goal. Your next step does not need to be — and in fact, probably should not be — some significant, grandiose action. There is always some small step that you can take which will move you that much closer. Our natural tendency is to sit and think, to make sure that we are fully prepared before we proceed. We try to be efficient and think about the quickest or best way to accomplish whatever it is that we are trying to do. The problem is that things never happen a linear fashion. Nor do they occur in a way that we can predict. If you start taking action towards your goal now, you may find that you end up back-tracking a bit, as you zigged when you should have zagged. That is okay; that is how this works. You need to go through the process. Repeatedly taking small steps towards your goal is the key to actually realizing it.

People may proclaim that you need to have a thorough understanding of what you are doing, that moving ahead without a clear plan will result in you having to backtrack and redo some work that you have already done. That is true; you inevitably will need to rework things. But accomplishing big goals is a process; it is extremely rare that you will have everything that you need to hit your mark correctly on your first try. You will almost always need to go back and rework; accomplishing important work demands that. So it is much better to start, and then go back and revise and tweak; you will be doing that anyway. Meaningful work requires that you deliver and then adjust.

I challenge you to take one concrete step today towards a goal that matters to you.

Just take a bite of your elephant.