Eating an Elephant

Many years ago when I still worked for Catering for Lincolnshire, our management team asked a lovely lady from Ireland to come and do some team building work with us. Now I remember very little about her except that she loved mashed potato, and still less about the work that she did with us apart from a lovely saying that has stuck with me.

‘If you want to eat an elephant, take small bites’

I have often offered this to others as a solution to tackling large projects. ‘Break it down into smaller chunks’ I would say, ‘It will make it easier to tackle.’

So recently I decided to take my own advice and apply it to some tasks that I dislike. The first was the washing up. I have always avoided this as far as possible. We do have a dish washer but there are things that will not go in and I would leave these until the sight of them annoyed and shamed me so much that I had to tackle it. Truly making a Mountain out of a Molehill. ‘How can I make this easier for myself?’ I thought. ‘How much washing up can I stand at one time?’ I felt that 10 minutes was acceptable to me so set the cooker timer for 10 minutes. I duly washed up for 10 minutes and when the buzzer sounded, I stopped. The next day I did another 10 minutes and so on. It wasn’t long before I was getting the whole job done with time to spare. By this stage it had become such a habit that I now do it as a matter of course each morning, without that feeling of dread (and disgust at myself). This was such a success that I decided to apply it to some of the piles of paperwork in the clinic. Again 10 minutes is an acceptable time for me to tackle any task. And guess what, the piles are going down with little effort.

Now I am not telling you this because I want to prove how ‘good’ I am at overcoming a ‘bad’ habit, but as an illustration to you of a simple and easy way for you to tackle virtually any detested task. Choose an acceptable amount of time that (and this is crucial) doesn’t make you rebel against it, and off you go.

Try it……. and let me know what Elephants you have eaten!!