Turning Mountains Into Molehills

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and you’ve heard the phrase a million
times don’t turn a molehill into a
mountain she’s making mountains out of
molehills he’s making mountains out of
molehills you know the phrase means
building something bigger or giving
something more importance than it
actually deserves and what I’d like to
do is the opposite today and I’d like to
show you how to turn mountains into mole
hills for success so you get anything
started you look at this
huge mountain of work that you need to
do right and it seems insurmountable but
you really want to do it so you like get
a running start and you think I got so
much to do well what if there was an
easier way of avoiding all that stress
and getting started on what you were
doing
the way to do that is to reduce that
great big pile of stuff that you need to
do into what it already is which is
discrete small individual things to do
there are people that call them micro
tasks there are people that call them
steps right so if you keep thinking in
terms of all the different things that
you need to do or the results the
outcome it’s gonna be really hard for
you to see the step-by-step process that
needs to happen just to get started and
to get things moving you also want to
build momentum right and the only way to
build momentum is to get some early wins
you know get some wins under your belt
it doesn’t have to be big wins in fact
it’s probably better if you have more
small wins than one big huge win you
know as I’ve been making these videos
I’ve learned so much about the little
steps that I need to do every time I do
one you know setting my lights setting
my my sound making sure that the image
looks good making sure that I don’t have
anything else running on my computer so
I get the best frame grabbing there’s
probably well I would say given you know
like the notes that I take that I do for
each one and then the building of the
webpage and the publishing to youtube
and the adding of anyway the point is
there’s literally dozens of things and
they’re all part of a much bigger
project which is the 365 videos for the
year but if I looked at this as one big
glob of stuff that I had to digest like
a snake swallowing a pig it would be
next to impossible but the idea that I
can break it down into individual little
tiny tasks and get them done in order is
a much more manageable thing and it
builds that muscle memory like when I
sit down to do a video I have a pretty
good idea of the path I’m taking all
along
way all the way up to getting if YouTube
provides it to me getting the the closed
captioning that they do and putting it
on the vo to gogo web page for raw SEO
it’s like the last step making sure that
it’s scheduled properly and all that
sort of thing and when you first start
especially if you’re doing this for a
business there’s a really big reason
that is kind of adjacent to all this to
make sure you’re doing micro tasks as
opposed to big big big things that might
require staffing or might require outlay
for equipment or software and that is
that when you’re first starting off
doing something you may be what will
Schroeder calls in startups comm
resource-constrained you know you don’t
know what it’s gonna cost you in terms
of time in terms of money in terms of
you know people to help you
relationships support so you want to
break these down into little tiny chunks
so that you’re not spending a whole ton
of money and when I say tiny chunks it
can be an hour or less a lot of the
things that I do to do these videos is a
few seconds right you know setting the
the the gain and the brightness and the
contrast on the camera every so often
you know copying the the the stuff that
YouTube gives me in terms of closed
captioning bringing it into BBEdit which
I love and getting rid of the line
numbers and so on that they’re their
files give you that’s like a very
straightforward process takes maybe 10
seconds to do it
and even if it takes up to 30 minutes or
an hour that’s still considered a micro
task it’s still considered a small
enough task that you can see the end of
it right so if this has helped you great
I’d love to know what big big big
project you’ve got looming in front of
you maybe it’s a class you’re taking
maybe it’s a project you’re working on
your demos your resume
maybe it’s your on-camera demo that’s
like that you’re on camera reels an even
bigger process than than just doing a
voiceover stuff who knows whatever it is
if you’re not a performer tell me what
project you might be working on that can
benefit from reducing it from one big
globby thing to do into a series of
small discreet micro tasks that are
steps that move you forward and help you
build momentum let me know in the
comments below I’d love to know that and
if you’d like some insight on how I’m
making these videos I don’t know if it’d
be helpful to you I’m really proud of
the little tiny things that I’ve learned
along the way and if there’s questions
you have I’d love to do an AMA later on
and ask me anything where I gather up
all the the questions that people have
asked in the comments I’d love to do
that
that’s a lice nice little micro task
that I could do for a future video or
five as we do these videos all year long
if you’d like to subscribe to my youtube
channel go ahead and click on my head
there if you see my head there if you
don’t look for a subscribe button
somewhere on the page then if you want
to see the latest video that I’ve done
go ahead and click on that frame there
and YouTube will play it for you I’m
David H Lawrence xvii I so appreciate
you watching these videos and I’ll talk
to you tomorrow.