Easily one of my favorite books is the Tao Te Ching. It’s an ancient Chinese text that’s either the collected wisdom of many ancient sages, or the reflections of a single accomplished and revered old man as he left his village to live as a hermit in his old age. No one knows for sure.
But either way, it’s filled with a bunch of great advice that’s infinitely quotable. And there’s a particular verse from it that I like to reread quite often. Depending on which English translation you read, the verse might be different.
“Think of the small as large and the few as many. Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.”
I love this quote because it illustrates a truth that we often forget.
Big goals aren’t achieved in one fell swoop any more than a giant building just appears. Both are built up from many more small actions taking place consistently.
It all comes down to what you can do. A goal can be accomplished, but you cannot do a goal. What you can do are those tasks you know will result in the goal being accomplished, once they are done. And once you have listed those smaller tasks and committed to getting them done today, you don’t need to worry about the big goal. You’ve made the big small.
Doing the work to load up your card each day with smaller tasks that serve your big important goals allows you to spend the day thinking small. All you have to do is follow what’s on the card. You don’t have to strategize, make super difficult decisions about long-term strategies, or anything else like that.
Once the card is filled out, just follow what you put there. And let the points motivate you. The small is now big. Getting those tasks done and getting those points is now your mission. And you can fully focus on that mission because you know that what’s on the card is there for a reason. You know that following what’s on the card will get you to your goal.
Doing that day after day will help you achieve bigger goals than you ever thought possible. And you can do it all by committing to thinking small each day.
