Tag Archives | Beginning

To Do Something Big, Start Small

Written by on May 22, 2013 · In Productivity

How do you know when you are ready to begin something big? How you know when you can handle a new pet? How do you decide when you are ready to expand your family? When do you feel ready to launch a blog or take a new job?

What if those are the wrong questions?

I think the right question to ask is, “What one step can I take toward what I want?”

I’d like to introduce you to the three newest members of our household: Honey, Rosie and Queen.

I have wanted to have chickens in the backyard for years, but each spring the chicks appear in the feed stores and I feel unprepared.  I don’t have a coop, I don’t know what breeds I want, I don’t know how to take care of them. Chickens live for a long time – 8 or 10 years for some breeds. I have trouble imagining my life more than a year or two from now, so making an 8-year commitment has given me pause every year. Until this year, when something shifted and I knew this was the spring we were going to buy chicks.

Raising chickens is my new big thing. These are the small steps I took that made my big thing not so scary after all.…

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How To Begin: 5 Steps To Get Your Project Moving

Written by on February 19, 2013 · In Productivity

362962076 43501f2b15 How To Begin: 5 Steps To Get Your Project Moving

Photo by Fran Ulloa via Creative Commons

It can be so hard to figure out where to begin when you have a big project that you want to accomplish.

There is that old advice, “Begin at the beginning,” but what if you don’t know where the beginning is?  What if the project seems so big and overwhelming that it seems impossible? No project is impossible, really, though sometimes the end result looks a little different than you thought.

Here are some tips on getting from your vision to reality (and finding the path in between).

First, know your goal

Here is what I do.  I start by looking at the future. What is my goal in approaching this project? Say I want to start a blog. What is my goal?  Do I want to earn a tidy income? Do I want to build a community of like minds? Do I want to build a platform that will help me to launch other projects, like a book? Do I just want a place to write about what’s on my mind?

For this blog, my primary goal is to build a community. Which is not to say some of those other goals aren’t also true, but that’s my primary goal right now.…

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