Have you ever asked yourself what the best way is to eat an elephant? The answer is simple: cut it into small pieces and eat it bit by bit over time.
Not that you would ever want to eat an elephant, right? But if you did have to, although this daunting task seems like a lot of work and triggers overwhelm in most of us, breaking it down into a step-by-step process makes it a lot more achievable.
Are you facing backlog of paper work and mail, an impending house-cleaning frenzy, tax returns that haven't been dealt with for years, or some kind of other huge pile of stuff to deal with? Does that trigger overwhelm, anxiety, and stress in you? Do you become more and more disheartened and discouraged just by looking at the amount of work that's due? Do you procrastinate even more as a result? Feeling unable to organize and sort out things according to priority? Not knowing where to start? Frustration is building up and depression setting in? More avoidance on your behave and more worrying and anxiety to go with that? Don't worry! You've got yourself an elephant that's totally manageable.
You just need to break it down and start chewing at it little by little.
Below are two strategies to help you do that.
Don't try and combine both strategies! Pick only one - whichever one works better for you:

1. Designate a specific amount of time daily to work on whatever the "impossible" job is.
   Start with 20-30min a day.
   It doesn't matter how much you complete during this time.
   The important thing is that you do something.
   Little by little, if you are CONSISTENT with this approach, you will end up completing all the work.
   Importantly, don't cheat thinking that if you miss a day or two you can make up by doing some extra time on the weekend.
   This type of thinking got you here in the first place, so if you continue that way you will stay where you are.
   Keep your commitment and give 30min of your day, EVERY DAY, towards "eating the elephant".
   
2. Alternatively to the first approach, you could commit to doing a specific amount of work every day.
   For instance, if you have 15 books to read, commit to reading 25 pages every day.
   Or if you have 150 envelopes to open and deal with their contents, commit to dealing with 5 or 10 of those every day.
   This way, when you think of the work, you tend to think about a small amount of it at a time, and it seems much less daunting and overwhelming.
   

Not knowing where to start? Here are a couple of suggestions, pick one that works for you:

• Start with the oldest job and work forward.
  
• Start with the most recent job and work backwards.
  
• Start with the most difficult task.
  
• Start with the easiest task.
  
• If you need to do house cleaning: go room by room; or vacuum all rooms then dust all rooms, etc.
  
• If you have a lot of unopened mail: open all the mail from the bank, then all the mail from the insurance company, etc.
  or open all the small envelopes first, then the big ones.
  
• If you need to sort out boxes, start with the bigger or with the smaller ones; or start with the ones on top working from left to right or from right to left.
  

Do you get it? In order to tackle any big and daunting task, you need to make up your mind about two things: Firstly, decide EITHER how long OR how much you are going to do every day.
Secondly, pick your criteria to help you decide where to start and in what order to address things.
And remember - you can never do less, you can only do more.
No matter how little your progress seems you have more work completed than you would have if you hadn't made that little effort.
Small things, CONSISTENTLY done, lead to extraordinary results.