Success as a Lego Project
I just realized that for the last month my email inbox hasn’t gotten above 35 unread messages. I don’t know about you, but I get a crap-ton of emails. I’ve had the email addy in question for over 20 years now, and have used it for a lot of offers, reports, sign ups etc.
This has resulted in a steady trickle of emails through the day, and a fairly large pile overnight. Heaven help me if I go away for a week and stay offline, because I will return to hundreds of messages. After a few glorious internet free days over Christmas last year, I logged on to over 600 emails.
Blech.
Slugging through the backlog on that is tedious, time consuming, boring and generally lost time. Even before China visited its latest plague upon the world, my backlog of messages was well over 100.
So what does this have to do with Legos and Success?
Well, with a Lego project, you have simple, easy to perform tasks. You sort your pieces, open the instructions, start at the beginning and follow the steps. A few hours later and, voila, 700 random blocks of unusually shaped coloured plastic have been transformed into a Lego Ninjago fighting vehicle.
That exact thing may have happened in my house, once or twice.
Anyway, I had a problem; too many unread emails.
I had a goal; zeroing out my inbox.
So I followed the Lego formula; sort them out and follow a step by step plan. I:
- sorted my inbox by sender
- chose ONE sender to deal with each sitting
- chose a cutoff date that anything earlier would be summarily deleted
- skimmed the subject lines for interest, deleting any that were time sensitive or not of interest
- read and responded to the rest
A few days later my inbox was clean.
Unused Capacity
Then I looked to my daily routines to find unused capacity. Adding together my morning coffee, a few minutes of my lunch break, my afternoon tea time and a few minutes after the boys are in bed gave me enough time to keep it permanently under control.
Do you have a goal that seems just too hard to achieve? Treat it like a Lego project. Break it down into small steps and find a way to incorporate those small steps into your day.
Maybe you find the obstacle isn’t insurmountable, after all.
