One of the biggest mistakes I used to make was thinking too far into the future.
I’d think about everything I wanted to accomplish this week.
Or this month.
Or this year.
The problem is that none of those timeframes are actionable.
Reality only moves one minute at a time.
I’ve started thinking about my day as roughly one thousand waking minutes.
Not twenty-four hours.
One thousand minutes.
Even better, I think of them as one hundred ten-minute blocks.
That changes everything.
Instead of asking, “How am I ever going to finish this project?”
I ask, “What’s the best use of the next ten minutes?”
That’s a question my brain can answer.
Ten minutes is enough time to write the first paragraph.
Send the email.
Make the phone call.
Outline the idea.
Start.
Most of us don’t need more time.
We need a smaller target.
Ten minutes is a target you can hit over and over again.
And those little wins have a funny way of turning into finished projects.