by Janet M.
Shlaes, Ph.D.
“The secret
of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking
your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on
the first one.”
~ Mark Twain
Have you ever
agreed to take on a project that seemed like a good idea at the time and then
felt impossible to accomplish? Getting started may have felt impossible for
several reasons: the project or goal seemed too big to achieve, you lacked the
requisite resources and you had no sense of where to begin. Writing my doctoral
dissertation initially felt overwhelming, a common experience for graduate
students when considering the 50+ percent of individuals who wind up with an
ABD (all but dissertation) status. What distinguishes those who finish from
those who don’t is not about intelligence; the difference that makes the
difference is about process. With expert mentoring from my department chair, I
quickly learned to move through my dissertation year one step at a time. The
whole project felt beyond my capabilities, but each of the five stages we
mapped out seemed both challenging and entirely doable. Accomplishing each stage
provided the space to step back, feel good about my accomplishment and regroup
for the next stage. Over the course of the year, each successive stage was made
possible through the skills and confidence gained from the previous stage. The
year flew by rapidly and organically; I was surprised looking back over that
year at how much I actually enjoyed the entire process.
How do you accomplish a
mammoth goal? You approach it like the solution to the question: “How do you
eat an elephant?” The answer to the question is: “one small bite at a time.” What
one small step can you take today toward reaching a desired goal?
Janet
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