A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
I don't take on big things. What I do, pretty much, is make the big things small and the small things big.
Abrams's Advice: When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
Dream small dreams. If you make them too big, you get overwhelmed and you don't do anything. If you make small goals and accomplish them, it gives you the confidence to go on to higher goals.
Any big task if you look at the grand picture... it seems to big to accomplish, so just watch the footstep in front of you... And that's what I do; try and win little battles every day.
It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.
Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.
You can’t take everything on. That’s why when people ask how does this film fit into my oeuvre. I say 'I don’t know. I don’t think in those terms’. If I did, I might become incapacitated by fear . . . How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.
You plant a garden one flower at a time. ... You write a book one word at a time, clean a closet one shelf at a time, run a marathon one step at a time. If you feel defeated by some large task, get your spade and dig the first hole.
Often I feel that projects overwhelm us when we look at how many hours are involved until completion. But just getting started is usually not that difficult.
I think about the game plan, and then I go through all the little things that are almost impossible to do. If you go through those things in your mind, you can do them.
I'm just getting settled as a responsible man - but if you split the elephant into little mouthfuls it will be fine.
There are roles that are terrifying because they're large or you may feel that they're out of your line, but I'm never terrified once the actual work begins. Once you begin rehearsal, then it's small building blocks. It's solving little problems one at a time.
Mostly I make lists for projects. This can be daunting. Breaking something big into its constituent parts will help you organize your thoughts, but it can also force you to confront the depth of your ignorance and the hugeness of the task. That's OK. The project may be the lion, but the list is your whip.
