Sadly, this will not be a post about dancing. I guarantee that none of you want dance lessons from me. This is all about breaking down your daunting tasks to make them more achievable!

If you were to start a business tomorrow, you wouldn’t set your first and only goal as “make a million dollars” because that’s insane, right? That can definitely be a longterm goal, but you’d probably start with things like “create a product” or “find customers” or “make our first 100 dollars” and then work your way up. That just makes sense.

BUT. When we tackle our personal to do list, a lot of the time we set the things we need to do at the “make a million dollars” mark. Meaning, the only thing we put on our to do list is the final step. A great example of this is “clean the house” or “do laundry.” These things may not seem crazy huge to you, but the idea is the same.

When we make our goals too large, they feel overwhelming and insurmountable. That business whose only goal is to make a million dollars? They’re probably going to get pretty discouraged when they’re not actually making a million dollars. They’ll go years without ever achieving their goal. But the business that celebrates the first hundred, then the second hundred, then the first thousand, then the first ten thousand? They are so motivated because they keep crossing their next goal off the list.

When your goal is “clean the house” that feels super overwhelming. And, especially if you’re doing that spring deep clean, you can work at it all day and feel like you’ve gotten nowhere. I’ll show you how you can break things down to make it easier.

Scenario: Clean out the closets

Old To-Do List:

• Clean out the closets

New To-Do List:

• Remove all clothes that are ripped or have holes
• Put ripped/holey clothes in labelled paper bags
• Move bags down to garage
• Take ripped clothes to textile recycling place
• Remove all clothes that no longer fit
• Put ill-fitting clothes in paper bags labelled Donate
• Remove all clothes that you don’t really like that much
• Put meh clothes in paper bags labelled Donate
• Move paper bags down to garage
• Take clothes to Goodwill
• Organize remaining clothing by color/occasion/whatever suits your fancy

Is the new To-Do List quite a bit longer? Yes. But you will feel so much more motivated as you’re able to keep crossing things off that you’ve accomplished. And it helps to give you more direction so you’ll be less likely to fall into the cleaning trap of just sort of moving things around aimlessly.

Hope this helps! If you’re having trouble breaking your tasks down, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do to help!