Once I got over my indignant resistance to it ('But I'm not a baby!') I found this approach so useful! You will all have heard of it before, but have you actually tried it?
When I use it I get through tasks faster and with a lot less stress. A friend once cut out baby sized footprints from paper and laid them on the floor to remind herself...
Cath wants to organise her writing things (see comments on this post). Now if she is like me she'll want it all done NOW. Actually she is more sensible and talks of taking a month over the job, which tells me she probably knows all about and practices baby steps already - but just to use her task as an example -
In the past I would set to with great energy and enthusiasm, pull everything out - the stationery, cards, stamps, diaries, writings finished and unfinished, poems, books about writing - while making a vague sort of plan, then discover, you know how it is, that I can't put them all in one place until I've moved other things from the shelf and to do that I need to sort the said things into keep and find a place for, give away, throw away, put aside to return to owner, and ..all these decisions soon tire me out and now I have twice as much stuff to deal with, and I feel overwhelmed and want to give up!
If I baby step it, I break the job down into tiny parts. The first part might be to collect together all my stationery from around the house into an empty cardboard box - and then, and this is the important bit for me - I STOP.
I've completed my task.
I've achieved something.
I feel satisfied.
I go and do something else.
When I come back maybe 10 minutes later, maybe next day, I have a little bit of a handle on the scale of the task and can decide the next baby step, and before I know it the job is done and , to my surprise, I've enjoyed doing it.
If you've never tried baby stepping you might try it on something you've been putting off....
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