Big projects, small incremental progress¶

How on earth do you ever finish a big project? Last week I read some, as he calls it, blindingly obvious advice in Mark Forster's "Do it tomorrow" book: you need to do something.

Obvious, huh? To finish a big project, do something. Actually this is the key and it is easy to forget it. Mark mentions coaching PhD students that are stuck with their thesis. "When did you last do something on your thesis?". You can imagine the answer.

I managed to finish my own 250 page PhD thesis in January 2007. Mostly by writing at least something every single day for the last year. The going is slow, but it is amazing how many pages you fill by writing 1.5 page every single day. Same with collecting and checking addresses of the people you want to send the book. It is a daunting task to do in one go, but with a couple of addresses every day you probably get it done within two weeks. Without stress.

Applicable for many problems you might have.