Small steps, sheep, and Parade’s End.

Breaking a task down into small steps is a well known strategy for making a project manageable and achievable. It’s one I used every day when working with clients and patients and an intrinsic part of their care plans.

It dawned on me recently that although I do follow this for my own work, I don’t always make it as easy as possible for myself. While working on a recent, large and daunting project I broke down what needed to be done into small steps as usual but there were days when those small steps needed more energy and motivation than they usually would have and I felt like I was getting nowhere fast. I realised that the small steps were too big! I had assumed that the small steps were the smallest they could be but they weren’t.

I thought about magnifying glasses, microscopes and quantum physics and began to apply this new perspective to the day’s task by asking, “How can I make it almost impossible not to do this?” and, “What’s the very first thing that needs to be done?”. Then a part of me would come up with a suggestion and if the response to the suggestion was an eager “Yes, I can do that!”, that was the starting point.

Some days the starting step was to turn the computer on. You might be thinking that anybody can turn a computer on so what’s the big deal about that? Having that eager and enthusiastic response of “Yes, I can do that!”, and know with certainty that you can do it, immediately creates a confident frame of mind. Making something easy to do saves energy at the same time as creating momentum. A sense of achievement is quickly reached which then creates energy and more momentum.

It doesn’t matter what that first step is, how easy it is, how small it is, or how insignificant it may seem to somebody else (nobody else needs to know!). The confidence, self belief and proof that accomplishing the first, miniscule step gives you is the big deal.

Here is how this strategy worked when I applied it to drawing.

Question: “How can I make it almost impossible not to do this?”

Answer: “Scribble a feel of the rocks.”

The marks on the top right of the page were the result. The pencil only touched the paper three times: the lower line, the left side scribble and in the scribble starting in the middle and trailing off to the right.

That led to the bigger scribble on the top left, below that a simple line drawing for the top of the rocks and then another simple line drawing for the composition and tone.

Nature notes:

Sheep on the Isle of Kerrera.

A stunningly beautiful sheep with a presence to match.

What I’ve been reading:

“Parade’s End” by Ford Maddox Ford. It was written around the mid to late 1920’s. The British ‘stiff upper lip’ , obsession with class and the cruelty that this creates is very evident which makes uncomfortable but interesting reading.