Just start your next big project and fulfill one of your dreams.
I remember the day I decided to write my first book like it was this morning, May 23, 1995. After reading a marketing book, I just sat there and blurted out to my dog, “I can do that, I’m going to take all of my experience and information and write a book.”
So fast forward to today. As I think about that moment, the enormity of that project and unfamiliar ground I was about to tread upon, it could have stopped me dead in my tracks.
Instead, I did the first thing I could imagine to move this thing along, I came up with a name and chapter titles and then placed two full page ads in industry magazines promoting the then yet unwritten book to solicit orders. If I got orders, if my target audience wanted the information promised in those chapter titles, then I’d write the book.
Well, they did want the information and they did order—and the rest is history as you may know and be the owner of one of those books. It was still an enormous project that took two years instead of the six months I’d planned.
Now here’s the important part—it would never have happened if I viewed it as the enormous project that it really was. I had to begin right away breaking it down into baby steps or since I’m a foodie, I’ll use a food related metaphor, breaking it down into bite-sized pieces—more like hors d’oeuvres rather than a main course.
So the next thing I did was to buy two wall calendars with big squares so I could write on them in colored erasable pens. I began to make my schedule: research; letter writing; phone calling; interviewing; and chapter-bit by chapter-bit, I began writing along with constant advanced marketing.
I broke down this enormous project so that I could see what my next little bite would be until it was done and sent off to the printer.
Dreams, plans and goals remain huge and for most people unfulfilled because they are so big, so unwieldy. If you really stop and consider any major thing you’ve taken on and accomplished, it got done because you broke it down into do-able bites so you could just start and take the first bite. Think about your last recording, or even the last song you wrote, tour your booked, play your wrote or dance you choreographed. In order to get it done, you had to just start and then you had to break it down into manageable bites.
Whatever plans and goals you have in your world today, don’t let the size of the project overwhelm you. Just start by breaking it down into smaller bite-sized pieces. Anything worth doing, especially when it comes to your art, is going to have many ingredients that need to be added to the mix to create the complete meal. Start with the hors d’oeuvres to whet your appetite for completing the project and make it manageable.
Don’t let the years slip by and your dreams go unfulfilled because they are too big. Just start with the hors d’oeuvres, it’s so satisfying!
Oh, and that book is now in its Revised 4th Edition, so I guess it was a good thing to work on.
What project have you been overwhelmed by but really would love to bite into and just start? What is getting in your way? What can you do today to set it in motion?
Leave me a comment below or on the Performingbiz Success Strategies Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/PerformingbizSuccessStrategies.
I can’t wait to hear about your success.
Now, Thanks to the Band Curfew from the UK for providing the Biz Booster theme Music, Future Dance. Check them out at www.curfew.co.uk
And for more career boosting tips, articles, books, resources, tele-seminars and online courses, visit me at Performingbiz.com
