The power of small increments & small steps

We have a new ginger kitten brought in by Half Moon.

His name is Kyo, named after a favorite character of mine from the manga/anime Fruits Basket. (He would turn into a ginger cat when hugged by a person of the opposite sex!)

My Mom and I would feed Kyo in small portions of food that’s easy for a kitten to chew, swallow, and digest. One pack would be good for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

On the other hand, when we have fresh fish for the mainstay cats and the stray ones who would visit our home when it’s eating time, we would shred the pieces of the fish and give it to them in portions as well. These tiny pieces could sustain them as they go by their day.

And the cats are happy! (That is our ultimate goal in life, right? To make the cats happy! Haha!)

I don’t know if this is a good analogy to how I work. (Perhaps I just want an excuse to draw cats, and to talk about cats!)

When I’m working and even exercising, I practice the power of small increments. You start small, and then make your way up as time goes by.

Say that I haven’t ran in a month. My goal would be to just run a kilometer for a certain number of days or weeks.

When my body has attuned to the workout already, I would increase the number of kilometers I aim to run next time.

I also practice the power of small steps done regularly/daily. This is what I follow on my creative pursuits!

Big intimidating projects (like a novel or a book illustration) and to-do lists sometimes overwhelm me.

Okay, scratch the ‘sometimes.’

They always overwhelm me!

So I shred them down to tiny pieces that I do in a day and a week! (The best method for me is to start with my goals for the month, then break them down to weeks, and then to days. I start with the big picture first, the big fish first, before we dig into the chunks that make up the big fish and the big picture!)

This is the monthly and weekly planner I use! I got them from National Bookstore! Every Saturday/Sunday, I would schedule the things I need to do in each day for the new week ahead.

Let’s say I’m working on a novel.

I would set a goal of writing 350 words in select dates. It’s a small chunk that I could do in a day. One cannot write 25,000 words in a day, so you need to shred the fish into tiny pieces that can keep you busy and motivated for a few months or a year.

For comics or graphic novels, I would phase it ideally as such: idea, storyline, scriptwriting, character design, thumbnails, line art, coloring, making the layout, and then printing!

Of course this takes time, so my schedule would look like character design/character design/character design for a few weeks, until I move on to another step.

I would allot just a few minutes to fully focus on it in a day. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be drafted first, so I can have something to work on in the next days!

When I’m painting, I schedule my week like this.

This is needed, since paint needs to dry too! I can’t work on a piece immediately, continuously, even if I wanted to.

When I’m managing my online shop Hourly Bird, which I relaunched last March 12, I divide the work as well!

You can see that I have two subtasks under Tuesday. These do not take up that much time, so I decided to do more than one task under Hourly Bird during this day!

When I’m listing down tasks too, I keep it simple. I don’t enumerate every single detail, because like what I said earlier, long lists can overwhelm me! Being a highly sensitive person and having to feel overwhelmed because of a plethora of responsibilities can derail me from being grounded and focused.

For instance, I just make ‘sign books’ and ‘wrap books’ to ‘pack books,’ because I cannot pack books without first signing them anyway.

Keep it short and simple—KISS—as they say! This applies to lists too!

In regards to client projects, let’s say I’m making a book cover illustration as an example! I distribute each step per day, until we reach the deadline. It’s also okay to harness your energy for the whole project in a day (if it can be done, especially if it’s due sooner), but since I have a lead time mostly with clients, we have the choice to not rush things.

We take it slowly but steadily, working closely together from the very rough sketches to the refined approved sketch to the final output, without compromising quality. I could work on it immediately in a day, but it will be too rushed, and I do not like rushing clients’ or personal projects!

Moreover, we only have the energy we need in a day.

Don’t try to borrow energy from tomorrow for today, because you wouldn’t want to push yourself too hard that you have no more energy to work in the next day!

I spread out my tasks like this and work in small increments, because I do multiple personal and client projects at the same time. Talk about project management. Haha!

But you might ask: what if all the projects you have are important?

How do we make sure that the subtasks under every project are ticked? Look at the due date. Look at who wants the project done: is it you or a client? Then prioritize! Give more hours to a major project in a day.

Here’s an example of how I write my tasks for the day, by the way! I write its category in all caps, so I know what is it or who is it for. I put the Client Projects first, so I know it’s the priority for the day.

I need to make sure that ALL of them are progressing, so that no one project will be left behind. Everything progresses daily/regularly, slowly and surely.

This looks like a Gantt chart!

This is the ideal, of course!

Sometimes, major things in life happen or we really need to take a rest because we might risk ourselves of getting burnt out, so we can’t 100% stick to our schedules. I remind myself that I can move the deadlines I’ve set for myself when it comes to personal projects, so I’ll shelf them for a short while and just allot more time on my clients’ projects!

Another example would be studying! Do it in small steps! In chapters. Or in topics.

I currently have a 282-day streak of learning Nihongo via the Duolingo app. In some days, I take more than two lessons, but most of the time, I just took one lesson which can be done in less than three minutes.

The small increments/small steps practice helps me get things done, and not just done-done, but done with ample amount of time and not rushed, because we want to give the best to our clients and hey, to our personal projects too!

These small things add up in the future! Sometimes, it may feel like nothing has changed, but when you look back, all the small things you’ve done built the big picture you have in front of you.

All the bite-sized lessons you took in just studying a language 5 minutes a day will help you speak it well someday.

All the small steps you took to jog will turn into 21k runs someday.

The small amount of words you decided to write per day will be a full-fledged novel someday.

Do not underestimate the power of the small to get the big things done!

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Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know your thoughts! Is there anything you would like to share too about small steps/increments? I’d love to read them!