Eating the Elephant

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time. That’s the answer. The question is whether you actually believe it.

Perhaps think of the biggest problem you are facing, and you may be staring at the elephant you need to eat, overwhelmed by how massive it is, convinced there’s no way you can finish it. So you’re not even taking the first bite.

The Daily Goal Reality

I mentioned this a few times in this and other articles: daily managed goals are the key to success. To this point today, I’ve only written 353 words. That’s not enough to make even a very small book, never mind another article, but I know it will add up over time.

If I stick to writing a similar amount every day, it’s a mathematical certainty that in a year I’ll have the better part of 130,000 words and maybe something I could be proud of.

Research on implementation intentions shows that specific if-then plans — deciding in advance exactly when, where and how you’ll act — meaningfully improve follow-through compared with vague, outcome-focused intentions alone (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). The math is simple. The execution requires discipline.

Why Huge Goals Paralyse

Sometimes people see huge goals as unattainable. They don’t even try. And they’re right. There’s absolutely no way they could do it. It’s not going to happen overnight.

So the only way is to make their goals smaller, break things down, and make each goal a daily goal, an achievable goal, and a goal that can be achieved every day.

You want to write a book? That’s 80,000 words. Terrifying. But 300 words a day? That’s a long email. You can write a long email. Do that for a year, and you’ve written your book.

You want to lose 50 pounds? Overwhelming. But 0.5 pounds a week? That’s skipping dessert twice. You can skip dessert twice. Do that for two years, and you’ve lost 50 pounds.

Studies on perceived difficulty show that large goals trigger avoidance behaviours while small goals trigger approach behaviours (Fishbach & Choi, 2012). Your brain sees ‘write a book’ as impossible and ‘write 300 words’ as manageable.

The Direction of Travel

Effectively working toward your goal almost always means you take multiple small positive steps every day. Your destiny is not created overnight, but the direction of travel can be.

You see real improvement by doing something every day. Look in the mirror after six weeks of daily exercise, and you’re going to see a different person than the one who killed themselves in the gym a few times over that same time period.

I see this constantly with patients trying to get healthier. The ones who go hard for a week, burn out, and quit see no progress. Those who walk 20 minutes every day for six months transform their health. Consistency beats intensity.

Research on habit formation shows that daily behaviours, even small ones, create neural pathways that make continued action progressively easier (Lally et al., 2010). You’re not just moving toward your goal. You’re becoming the person who moves toward goals.

Building Momentum

Small steps build momentum, and each one, however small, moves you ever closer to where you want to go. There’s no point going around and around in circles. You need to think about what you need to do every day and do the one achievable thing that’s going to move you forward.

Progress isn’t complicated. It’s the systematic oversimplification of your goal into achievable daily steps. Not sexy. Just mathematical.

Studies on progress monitoring show that people who track daily actions toward goals are significantly more likely to achieve those goals than people who only track end results (Harkin et al., 2016). The daily action is the unit of change.

The Compound Effect

Small daily actions compound. This is where the real magic happens, not in the individual day, but in the accumulation.

Writing 300 words one day doesn’t feel like progress. It feels insignificant. But writing 300 words every day for 100 days compounds. That’s 30,000 words. That’s a third of a book. Writing 300 words every day for 300 days? That’s 90,000 words. That’s a complete manuscript.

The compound effect isn’t just about addition. It’s about multiplication. Each day you show up makes the next day easier. Each day you write makes writing feel more natural. Each day you exercise makes exercise feel less like a punishment.

Research on behavioural momentum shows that consistent daily action creates psychological momentum that makes continuation significantly easier than initiation (Nevin, 1996). Starting is hard. Continuing becomes automatic.

The Time Reality

As the saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? The answer: one bite at a time. But I must warn you, it just may take a little while.

This is where most people quit. They understand the concept. They start taking daily action. Then they realise it’s going to take longer than they hoped, and they abandon the process.

You want to write a book in a year? That’s 365 days of showing up. You want to lose 50 pounds? That’s two years of consistent action. You want to build a business? That’s probably two or more years of daily work and commitment before it’s sustainable.

The time is going to pass anyway. The question is whether you’ll spend it taking daily bites or staring at the elephant wishing it were smaller.

Studies on temporal discounting show that people systematically underestimate what they can achieve with consistent effort over long periods (Frederick et al., 2002). You overestimate what you can do in a day. You underestimate what you can do in a year.

The Identity Shift

The beautiful thing about daily action is that it changes who you are, not just what you achieve. You don’t just write a book. You become a writer. You don’t just lose weight. You become someone who exercises daily.

Each daily action is a vote for the person you’re becoming. Write 300 words today, and you’re voting for ‘I’m a writer.’ Exercise for 20 minutes, and you’re voting for ‘I’m someone who exercises.’ The outcome is just a lagging indicator of your identity.

Research on identity-based behaviour change shows that people who adopt identity-congruent behaviours maintain those behaviours significantly longer than people focused on outcomes alone (Oyserman et al., 2007). Become the person. The results follow.

What You Need to Do

Stop staring at your elephant. It’s big. You know it’s big. Staring at it doesn’t make it smaller.

Break your massive goal into the smallest, most sustainable daily action you can take. Not the biggest action you can do once. The smallest action you can do every single day for a year.

Then do that action today. Tomorrow, do it again. The day after, do it again. Don’t worry about the elephant. Just take your daily bite.

The compound effect will take care of the rest. One bite at a time. Every day. For as long as it takes.

Your elephant will be gone before you know it.

Further reading

• Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.
• Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., et al. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198–229.
• Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H., Potts, H. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
• Oyserman, D., Fryberg, S. A., & Yoder, N. (2007). Identity-based motivation and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(6), 1011–1027.
• Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery.