Deb's Sparks! One frog at a time...

Mark Twain said "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."  I have used the 'eat the frog' analogy throughout my career when I was procrastinating.  In fact, Brian Tracy  has written a book called "Eat that Frog" about overcoming procrastination.

I find myself at a point where I have no time for procrastination.  As quickly as I decided to take a step towards moving, my new house presented itself and I am in the midst of working through the purchase.  Providing it all goes well, I will be moving in less than 2 months and then will put my current home on the market.  The reason for the buy - move - sell strategy?  I am surrounded by FROGS!

Having lived in the same small townhome for 20 years, I have accumulated stuff and a lot of it.  Not hoarding levels of stuff, but more stuff than my little townhome needs.  Faced with the task of packing and moving, all of my stuff looks like frogs.  I am overwhelmed to the point of standing still and doing nothing.

Has this happened to you?  Not the stuff, but becoming so overwhelmed by a project that you simply do nothing because it's easier.  We know we need to take action to move forward on our projects and our journeys.  How do we do that?  One step (frog) at a time!

From my days as a project manager, we broke all project milestones into detailed steps so we could track the timing and ultimate outcome of the project.  The same principle works with our own projects.  If we are going to look for a new job, we need to prepare our resume, identify target industries and target companies, write cover letters, review network contacts, etc.  We could easily create a mini-project plan or list of steps or check list for this project.

While I was standing in my kitchen today, I realized I needed to do at least one thing each day.  Eat one frog each day and simply start the process of working through 20 years of stuff and sorting into "trash - donate - keep" piles. My project was the oven drawer where I found the gleaming brand new broiler pan that had never been used along with a ton of other bakeware that could be donated.  I emptied and cleaned the drawer, put the donations in the box and placed the keep items back in the drawer.  One frog eaten.  Whew.

I noticed that as soon as I ate one frog and realized it wasn't so bad, I wanted to eat another.  So I opened the oven where I determined it was all 'keep' items but I need to clean the oven.  That's the next frog, cleaning the oven without using the self-clean feature or harsh chemicals. Frog identified and research underway.

I won't be writing a project plan to clean and pack my house, but I will be looking at my frogs and tackling some of them each day when pockets of time appear in my calendar.  It only took me 20 - 30 minutes to work through the oven.  So, small pockets of time = at least one small frog.

Sometimes our goals and dreams overwhelm us.  We need to remind ourselves that we can move towards our goals by taking one step at a time or in my case, one frog at a time.

Ribbit.

Wishing you peace, love and sparks of achievement!  Deb