Sayings That We Know, But We Do Not Understand (Part 1)

Throughout our lives, there have been a lot of age-old sayings that have been embedded in our minds. Some of these sayings were nestled into your subconscious courtesy of your parents during childhood. We have often heard these sayings, but we haven’t fully grasped what they mean. This article is the first part of multiple articles dealing with sayings we don’t understand. Here is a quick look at one of these statements. 

“Break it down into smaller steps.”

This is a very popular heuristic that needs clarification to be more effective. Breaking down large projects into smaller tasks is just as much of an art form as a pragmatic approach. Your more minor step needs to be defined with an objective/goal/finish line to measure when the step has been completed effectively. A common question is, “What is my objective when my outcomes are unclear or unassured?” This question typically arrives when in the process of discovering something new and largely unknown. Inventors, creators, and visionaries face this problem with defining the finish line of any creative step due to the inherent responsibility to blaze their trail and travel to where nobody has ventured before. Naturally, with ambitions such as these, there is a general lack of rules/guidelines, procedures, and performance assessment that is typically provided with a stock task that has been completed many times before by many parties. Furthermore, a stock task typically requires public knowledge to navigate the steps to accomplish said task. These resources are denied to those creating in an industry where the knowledge is closely guarded as proprietary information.

How do I know I have arrived at the outcome I need? Sometimes, this question is answered with a time-based goal rather than a performance-based goal for your small step. Take, for example, doing research. Research can be incredibly chaotic when you begin with little to no understanding of the subject matter or lack a clear image of the completed project. Where do I begin? How much research do I need? How do I know when I have enough knowledge? When you are this early in the discovery process where you are responsible for creating your direction, unlike in school where the assignment says very clearly to find a maximum of 3 sources for your project, determining your progress can be as basic as assigning a certain amount of time to have your tushy in the office chair searching the web for information. Sometimes, when searching for a great job, three potential matches fall into your lap within the first 15 minutes. Other times, finding one potential match might take a couple of hours. This is why measuring your performance in terms of “seat time” might effectively keep you on task in the beginning.

This time-based objective can help bypass difficulties when starting an assignment in general. With projects, there needs to be some allowance for FAFO (Fool Around and Find Out). The act of sitting in the chair and organizing information, putting together a schedule, outlining the necessities and no-compromises of a project are all critical work that might not be clearly defined. When planning a project for a long stretch into the future, forming a schedule might only be created with a vague idea of what awaits us. There might be a need to repeat this task many times over the coming weeks and months. Making the objective “I will spend 10-15 minutes creating a ROUGH SCHEDULE for this project” is a lot more effective than “I will create THE SCHEDULE for this project” because its verbiage allows for the task to be modified down the line.

Another overlooked component of breaking down projects into smaller steps is the “needs assessment.” There is such a high potential for your project to split off into a random tangent if you do not collect an inventory of needs to be satisfied in the project. Seemingly important work can be a misuse of time and resources when they fail to meet the necessary objectives of the project ultimately. Perhaps the project is born out of a need to solve a problem. Therefore, you decide to create a gizmo to solve that problem. Along your way, you discover that you could increase the value of your gizmo by adding additional features that increase the versatility and appeal of your product. However, these added features may not be directly applied to solving the original problem effectively. If left unchecked, this design creep leads to cost overruns in labor hours, tools, and materials. Soon, deadlines are missed, and there is growing impatience among customers who have pre-ordered your gizmo to solve their problems. Reputations are damaged, and faith is lost in your company. Meanwhile, another company has developed a more timely and cost-effective gizmo tailored to solving the customers’ problems. The other company has accomplished this by maintaining a laser-focused vision of solving the problem, thereby meeting the customers’ needs.

This laser focus on meeting the needs of a problem is incorporated from the very start of a project. This is why reading the entire school/work assignment and answering your questions with your teacher/boss before beginning the work is so important. These needs need to be written into every outline and rough draft. When breaking down a project into smaller steps, ask yourself, “What needs must be satisfied? What questions need to be answered?” This method helps avoid surprises when it comes time to receive the grade on the big project. The highest points are given to the project that most effectively satisfies the assignment’s needs. These needs are collected from the written postings of the assignment, the emails to the professor or T.A., the in-class lectures, the discussions during office hours, the web forum community on the class website, etc. We repeat many sayings without knowing the full breadth and depth of their meanings. I hope I have given you insight into just one of these sayings.

Please email me at Nate@adhdcoach.life if you want more of these articles or to schedule a free 30-minute “Get-Acquainted” session to learn more about how coaching can work for you!