Tackle the big jobs in little pieces

This article first appeared on October 11th, 2012.

Big jobs are a big part of small business.

There are business plans to write up, tender documents to prepare and submit, loan applications to fill in, products to design and unexpected logistical crises to solve.

Then there are all the local, state and federal government regulations and compliance requirements that get thrown our way. That’s assuming you trade solely within Australia.

And don’t even get me started on the tax office!

It’s easy to understand why many of us feel so overwhelmed – most small businesspeople are drowning in paperwork! With all the red tape we’re constantly confronted with, sometimes it feels like it’s a miracle we get any work done at all!

Online resources like StartupSmart can help with the how for all of these jobs, but how should you go about managing the when?

If you’re confronted with a big job, stop thinking of it as one big job. Break that big mountain trek down into a series of smaller ridges to climb.

Have a big fat form to fill in by next Monday? The kind that quite possibly required the felling of a small forest to produce?

Stop thinking of it as one form, and start thinking about filling in a certain number of pages today, more tomorrow and a few more the day after.

You will find setting yourself the task of filling in three or four pages today is a far more manageable task than filling in a phone book-sized form in less than a week.

Get it done – today!