Breaking It Into Tasks

A project is just a recipe with the title removed. When ammi makes nihari, she does not stand in the kitchen and think 'I will make nihari'. She thinks: soak the wheat overnight, brown the meat in pieces, fry the onions to deep gold, grind the masala, simmer for four hours, garnish with adrak and lemon. Six steps. Each one is small enough to actually do. The whole pot of nihari is too big to think about. The browning of onions is not.

When you cannot start a thing, it is almost never because the thing is too hard. It is because the thing is too big. The fix is not motivation. The fix is decomposition. Take the project and ask, what is the very first physical action somebody could do in the next 30 minutes that moves this forward. That is task one. Then ask the same question about what comes after. Keep going until you have a list of 8 to 15 small actions.

There is one test for whether a task is small enough. Can you finish it in one sitting, between morning chai and lunch, without needing somebody else to do something first. If yes, it is a task. If no, it is still a project, and it needs to be broken down again. 'Make the assembly amazing' is not a task. 'Email vice principal the theme proposal' is a task.

Today's habit. Pick one project that has been sitting in your head all week. Open a notebook. Write the project name at the top. Below it, write 10 small actions, each starting with a verb a witness could see. If you finish with fewer than 6, the project is not understood yet, sit with it ten more minutes. If you finish with more than 15, group some of them. The list is the project now. The big scary thing is gone.