Life Begins With Just One Thing

It is the key to getting out of under a mire of dreaded tasks. It is the trick to crawl out from under too much to do. It is the antidote to panic, and the retort to confusion.

Just one thing. Just do the next thing, the hard thing, the most important thing. Dive in and do.

When faced with a pile of yucky tasks (why do we always let them pile up?), just do one. If you do one a day, they evaporate rather rapidly, and the list is usually only long because we’ve procrastinated for weeks!

When life overwhelms you with more things to do in the day than you can possibly do, then select the most important thing, and get it done, then select the next most important. By the end of the day, it may not all be done, but you know the critical stuff has been taken care of.

I’ve talked to many business owners and moms who have felt like that. I’ve counseled them to select the most important task, and get it done, then select again. Many have come back later to say they DID get it all done after all, just by getting rid of the paralysis and doubt and doing it. Sometimes we also need to relieve ourselves of the burden of never measuring up, in order to achieve more than we know we can. Just focusing on the task at hand, which we know we CAN do, lets us move forward without worrying about the other stuff that doesn’t matter while we are doing THIS.

We can only really do one thing at a time anyway. So all that other stuff doesn’t matter until the time comes to do it, at which time it becomes the center of our focus and efforts. One shovelful at a time, you can move a mountain, but only if you focus on hefting each load, and not on the size of the mountain.

Just do what comes next.