When in doubt break it down

"Break it down now."

Beyoncé said it in Work It Out, and I say it whenever there's something I'm procrastinating.

Who am I not to listen to Queen Bey?

And by the power of Beyoncé, it never fails!

When you're procrastinating or overwhelmed by a task, there's a good chance that part of the reason is lack of clarity around what actually needs to be done.

Breaking down the task into its individual parts will help.

First of all, you'll get a better picture of what actually needs to be done, helping the overwhelm.

And second, completing smaller subtasks can help you build momentum to make even more progress, countering the procrastination.

Take this example:

Until this week, I'd been putting off recording a new tutorial for one of the digital products I sell. It'd been on my to-do list every week for AT LEAST two months.

But last Sunday, I changed the way it was entered in my task manager...from one (estimated) 30-minute task for recording all the videos, to separate 5-10 minute tasks for each video.

The more detailed plan and more granular time estimates did the trick.

I told myself I'd record two of them this week, but I've done six.

Once I broke the project down further, it became so easy that I went from being weeks behind to weeks ahead of schedule.