When I was in college, I preferred to write ten-page papers in one night. It wasn’t because the paper was due the next day (often, I’d finish it before the due date), but I liked submerging myself into the task at hand and seeing it through to completion. It’s just the way I’m wired.
Nowadays, I don’t have the luxury of segmenting my time into large blocks and working on a project until it’s finished. And it’s caused me a lot of frustration over the years. Some of my clients are wired like me and prefer waiting to do something until they have a large enough chunk of time to get it completely done. The problem? You can see it…the large block of time never happens and the project never gets done.
So, as much I prefer the big block of time, I’ve come to embrace the smaller ones too. Fifteen minutes is often all I need to do the next step in a project. I’ve started celebrating not just the completion of the entire project, but the completion of every little step along the way. It feels good to have accomplished even the smallest task. And it definitely feels better than having the whole thing still hanging over me.
