by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethspanncraig.com
by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethspanncraig.com
When a task feels overwhelming, my first instinct is usually to avoid it. The only problem is that avoiding it tends to make it loom even larger. What helps me isn’t tackling everything at once, but showing up in small, doable ways, day after day.
Why Big Projects Feel So Scary
Projects feel impossible when we picture doing them all in one sitting. Writing a novel sounds overwhelming if you imagine producing 60,000 words in an afternoon. Decluttering a house feels hopeless if you picture losing a whole weekend to it. But that’s not really how anything gets done. Most finished projects are just a lot of small actions stacked up over time. When the goal becomes 200 words a day, or one tidied corner each morning, the whole thing starts to feel approachable.
The Quiet Power of Consistency
Showing up daily builds a kind of momentum that occasional bursts never quite match. Even on a day when you only manage fifteen minutes of writing, you’re keeping the project alive in your head. There’s also something about repetition that trains your brain to expect the activity. After a few weeks of daily sessions, sitting down with the laptop stops feeling like a battle of willpower and starts feeling automatic. You also have these daily wins, which makes you feel more positive about writing and your part in it.
Catching Things Before They Pile Up
A lot of overwhelm comes from letting small things accumulate. One load of laundry is no big deal; three weeks of it is a mountain. A few hundred words a day feels natural, but trying to write 10,000 after ignoring the manuscript for two months feels brutal. Keeping up a little at a time tends to stop small tasks from snowballing into something really awful.
On the Hard Days, Aim Low
Some days, the most you can do is the smallest thing that still counts—one sentence, one folded shirt, one page of research. It might feel pointless, but those tiny efforts do two things. They keep your daily streak going, and they often nudge you into doing more than you planned. Once you’ve started, momentum has a way of carrying you further. And on the days it doesn’t, you’ve still moved forward, which counts for something.
Today’s Scene, Not the Whole Book
What I like about daily chunks is that they pull my attention away from the size of the finished thing and onto the small action right in front of me. Instead of worrying whether the novel is good enough to publish, I just focus on getting today’s scene right. The goal was never speed or perfection; it’s steady progress that adds up, minus the burnout that comes from sporadic, heroic efforts.
What’s one overwhelming task you could chip away at with just fifteen minutes a day?
Feeling overwhelmed by big projects? The secret isn't doing everything at once—it's showing up with small, consistent efforts every single day: Share on X