It’s All Bite Sized

Photo by amirali mirhashemian 

I used to like reminding my students, when they’d tell me that things were too hard or just simply too much, that the key to beating this sort of stuff is to think of it all as a hamburger.

Yup a hamburger. Stick with me here.

What I used to tell them is that when they (or anybody actually) bites into their favourite, huge, big, gigantic hamburger, that they never swallow it all in one big bite. Nope, they take little bites. And they take these little bites because their mouth is simply far too small to cram a whole big hamburger into their gob.

Unsurprisingly it’s the same for Leaders too. When we eat a hamburger – when we eat anything actually – we tend to chew off as much as we can, and no more. And if we’re really clever we’ll also take a little moment to savour what we’re eating while we’re at it.

This is the same for those times when the task in front of us is simply far too big, or far too much. There’s no way you can tackle the whole task in one big bite – so don’t even try. Break it down into “mouthful” pieces. And although the task might not necessarily be as tasty as your favourite hamburger, you can still take time to savour, or get some meaning, out of the situation.

There’s no challenge in front of us that can’t be tackled in bite sized chunks. So stop looking at a task and thinking it’s far too big, or onerous, and instead take a little bit of time to wonder where you’d be best to take that first bite.

Steve