Where do I begin?

When faced with a task that feels insurmountable, where do you begin? There are a number of ways to approach this. One way it to segment the task into smaller subtasks and identify where to begin. For example, when faced with gathering all your documents to file next year’s taxes, write down all the steps you would need to take to accomplish that. It might be to gather all of your receipts, sort them by month or category, and then create a spreadsheet to capture the information. There are probably a number of subtasks that can be added to this. Once you have completed this, decide what it is that you can tackle first. It might be that you start by putting all your receipts into a box. That’s easy enough to do, right? The next step might be to create folders to sort the receipts. Again, not rocket science. Use the plan that you created to take one task at a time and don’t forget to give yourself credit for the work you’ve done. Another approach is to use a mind map in which you start with a circle with your goal written within it. Then draw spokes radiating from the circle with more global topics written on the spokes. I did this when faced with completing my doctoral dissertation. The topics included Research, my Literature Review, etc. From each of the spokes I would insert the subtasks such as my sources for Research. As I completed each task I would mark it with a red DONE and date it. Eventually my dissertation was completed. What plan can you use when you don’t know where to begin?

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