โIn that predicament, if Iโm lucky, Iโll remember the observation, usually attributed to Joan Baez, that โaction is the antidote to despair.โ People tend to quote this in the context of political or environmental activism, but it applies to everything else, too: an overfilled inbox, a cluttered garage, an intimidating creative project or overdue tax return. If you can get yourself over the gap between knowing what you need to do and taking an action, things can only get better from there. Which means that at least the nature of the immediate challenge is clear: not to โbecome more productiveโ or โget motivatedโ or โmake a plan for the monthโ or something like that, but just to do one thing to address whatever situation youโre in. [โฆ] If you can approach your daily life in this way for a while โ as a sequence of momentary, self-contained, eminently doable actions, rather than as an arduous matter of chipping away at enormous challenges โ you might notice something profound, which is that, in fact, this is all you ever need to do. You can make your way through life exclusively in this manner. (As E. L. Doctorow said of writing, itโs โlike driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.โ) And not just that: actually, itโs all you ever could do. There is no achievement, in the history of human civilisation, that has ever been accomplished by any means other than as a sequence of doable actions. In the end, it isnโt really a question of โbreaking big projects down into small chunks.โ Itโs more a matter of seeing that โbig projectsโ are nothing but psychological constructs, quasi-illusory entities summoned into existence by taking a particular view of what our lives really consist of โ which is moments, and the actions that unfold in them. After all, in any given moment, weโre never actually โworking on a big projectโ or โaddressing a major challengeโ or anything similar. Weโre always just taking an action. And then another. And another.โ
