Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:00)
It's not as difficult as it may appear. Just wanted to share this very simple strategy, I guess. For those of you who may be faced with some sort of task or project, maybe even something of a ministry or business that you're working on. And right now you feel overwhelmed. Right now, the task
The job, the project seems overwhelming. Because right now, it looks like there's so many things to do. It just looks overwhelming. You've zoomed out and the the big picture has become too big for you. And you're like, man, I'm I don't even know where to start. I don't even you just you're just crushed by the very thought of how much effort this is going to take. I wanna share something with you that I've
developed in my own life and I have found it to really be helpful when I feel overwhelmed and I feel stressed out and I think like, yo, this is just too much for me to deal with at one time. some people might call it chunking it up or or chopping it up. But well let me let me explain it by sharing something that I've recently had to do and kind of how I approached it. Recently I've had to write
Some emails, a particular email sequence. And there's about five or six emails that I had to write. And when I looked at the entire project, I said, man, I gotta write all this information, all this content, seven emails, just way too much. And I remember looking at it and thinking about it, and just by the very thought of it, I just I just got wiped out, man. So I just closed my laptop. I was just like, I was done. Like, man, this is too much. And I remembered.
That maybe years ago I had wrote this, I had written out a little process. Maybe I was inspired one day I was out on a run or something like that. But I remember writing down this this concept of these mini sprints, right? I'm a runner, I love running, and so sometimes I connect these analogies between fitness and life or or you know, the mental processes in life, or fitness, right, and and and life. And so I remember.
This concept of these mini sprints. And a mini sprint is short, hard bursts of energy and effort. And then you cool off. You back off of it. It's not like a marathon runner who's got to run, you know, long distances, is way drawn out. A sprinter has a very short distance to cover, and then they stop instantly, and then they rest and they recover.
And then they do it again. And so if you take that same approach, these little mini sprints with whatever project or thing that you're that you're working on, you're able to chunk it up. You're able to portion it out into these little bite-sized pieces. And then you're able to, over you know, a reasonable amount of time, a responsible amount of time, you're able to complete the task. So, what does this look like? For me, it looked like okay, I got seven emails, right?
If I were to sit down, which I tried and failed miserably, if if I try to do all seven at one time, it's draining. I get the mental fog, the mental blocks, just whatever you want to name it, it's just, I get distracted, it's just too much. It's too much at one. It's it's it's overwhelming to my nervous system. But what I started to do was I I took one email and I wrote that one.
Right? Just the one. And I set a timer. That might be something else you want to do. You set a timer. I'm gonna give myself 10 minutes to do this. There's something very powerful about setting a time. That's why timelines, project timelines and and and and just timelines in life, they're they're so important because they they kind of light a fire under you. It kind of gives you this internal incentive and this little you know internal motivation to get the thing done. But you give it.
a finite amount of time, five minutes, ten minutes, whatever it is, and then you just do one. And then you back off. You give yourself 30 minutes to rest, an hour to rest, and then you do it again. Ten minutes. Boom, write this one. You block out everything else. You don't think about anything else. You don't do anything else. Many times, you know, I'll miss a text message or someone, you know, will try to reach out and call me and and I'll miss a call because I also take my phone and I
Put it face down on, you know, silent. And I cut the television off or like in anything that's distracting, I remove it so that I'm like single focused, right? That's the only thing that I'm doing at that particular time. I even heard one time, and I forgot where I got this from, but like if you're on your laptop and you're you're really trying to accomplish something, don't have multiple tabs open unless it's absolutely necessary to that task.
But many times we'll have multiple tabs open and they're just different random things that we're working on. Sometimes I got the bank tab open because I've been, you know, I was trying to transfer some money or something, and then I got YouTube open because I was watching something on YouTube, and then I got another tab open from a website because I was working on something there. And before before long, you got like nine or ten tabs open. And those can be distracting. So eliminate as many of the distractions as you possibly can.
And focus on that one thing for that 10 minutes, set the timer so you know it's gonna go off. It motivates you, and you nail that second one, and then you give yourself a break again, and then you nail the third one, and then you give yourself a break again. This may seem super simple and super elementary, but it's super effective. And sometimes we need to simplify success.
Sometimes we overcomplicate success. We make it too complex. And I've I've heard that complexity is the enemy of execution. Complexity is the enemy of execution. The more complex you make a thing, the more complicated you make a thing, the more obstacles you put in your own way, the more hurdles you you erect in front of your own path, then the less you're going to execute, the more likely it is that you're going to.
retreat, abort the mission, or not even start at all, because just the very sight of it overwhelms you. So let's simplify our success. Let's chunk it up, break it down, and remember this really simple process, these little mini sprints, the sprint to success, right? We can call it that. The sprint to success. Whatever that thing is, right? You got a whole bunch of it, got all these tasks, got this big thing to do.
Let's break it into little mini sprints, mini tasks, and just do the one. Get it off your plate. The other thing, psychologically, what's pretty powerful is that when you complete one, not only do you prove to yourself that you can do it, because sometimes you just need to know that you can do it. not only do you prove to yourself that you can do it, but it motivates you. Like completing a task creates motivation, it inspires you.
So you actually are picking up momentum, you're you're you're re-energizing yourself, you're closer to the finish line. Like all of that works in your favor by just breaking it down, bite-sized pieces, small, simple sprints with a time, set a timer, find a timer so that your mind knows: hey, I only got so much time, and you will be amazed at how fast and how.
Your mind works on your behalf, works for you and not against you, helps you to really dial in. Because the truth is, y'all, most of this stuff that overwhelms us, most of this stuff that gets in our way, we could easily complete it. But we get caught up here. These little brain blocks. We get caught up in our minds. We get caught up in our thinking. And I don't know if people understand this or not. I know it's something that I discovered not too long ago. Thinking is actually energy.
Thinking and processing is energy. And so, like, we only have so much energy in a given day, right? And so, like, yo, your battery, right? You might start off on full and you might need like 50% of your battery to complete the thing, but you're already taking, making deposits, well, not making deposits, you're making withdrawals on your energy before you ever even get started, because you're overthinking it, right?
That's why procrastination just kills dreams. That's why, that's why perfectionism kills dreams. All of that is thinking energy, thinking power that should be allocated and really assigned to the task in and of itself. So all of that works together. That last thing I'll share with you guys, man. So I'm I'm finishing up my run out here this morning. And I was just thinking, again, thinking in in runner's terms.
Lot of people get caught up when it comes to physical fitness, right? some you know, I I remember back when I was I was first getting started running and the the thought, the idea of a mile seemed so big. man, we're gonna get out, we're gonna run a mile. that's what my trainer was telling me. And I'm like, man, a mile? Wow. That just it it just blows it blew my mind to even conceive that I would run a mile, right? And so I was like, Man, that's a lot of
At a distance. Long story short, once I got properly trained on how to run, how to breathe, how to pace myself, all of those things, then a mile became like less than a warm-up. Three miles became my official warm-up. Like that's what I used to get the body going. I've run five K's, 10Ks, half marathons. Next year I'm gonna run my first full marathon.
My point to this is that sometimes we we we look at something and it's not that big of a thing compared to the potential that we have. We undervalue, underestimate our own potential. We underestimate what's possible for us, and we make small things big things. It's all perspective. It's all how we look at it. We're making small things big things, or we make big things small things.
That's the God-given gift that we have. Choice, perspective. We can make something big or we can make something small. So whatever we decide, whatever we choose. And so I was just thinking to myself, like so many people that I've invited out to run or talk to about running, and they kind of joke, like, yeah, that's for you. Yeah, I'm good. I, you know, I can't do that, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, wow, man, we're limiting our lives so much.
Because of the perspective that we have about something. I wish we would give ourselves as much credit. I wish we would make ourselves as big as we make these tasks. I wish we would find a way to make us as big as we make the obstacles and the challenges of our lives, our own potential, our own God given.
Existence. I I I I wish we saw ourselves as giants, as we s we see ourselves as something powerful and big, rather than giving all of that credit to to the task. But my point to all of this, long, long way, long-winded way of saying this. on average, on average. Obviously it varies based on height and all these other little factors. But on average, if you had to average it out, a mile is about 3,000 steps. 3,000 steps.
If I said, hey, let's go walk for a hundred steps. I didn't say let's go walk a mile. I said let's go walk a hundred steps, right? And I'm trying to do the math in my head even as I share this. Well, what would that be? A hundred. So a hundred goes into a thousand ten times. So you would have to do that 30 times, right? 100 goes into a thousand ten times, and then you have to multiply that by three, and then you'll you'll have yourself a mile. So
I wonder what people would say if I say, Hey, let's go walk a hundred steps, right? You do that. And then once we're done with that, because most people can knock that out without even thinking about it, because we do it anyway, just through our normal living, just getting up and going throughout our day, we're we're killing it. We don't even realize it. But I said, Hey, let's let's walk a hundred steps, and then let's walk another hundred steps, and then let's walk another hundred steps, and then let's walk another hundred steps and just keep tacking on a hundred steps.
You you could easily get a person to a mile without even knowing it because they would realize like, all I'm doing is doing what I've always done. And sometimes we have to realize that we're we're so capable of so much more. We're capable of doing the things that we sometimes overwhelm ourselves with. They're very doable. It's just a tweak in your perspective, a tweak in your approach, right? If you can tweak that, if you if you can just make a quick calibration.
in your approach to to you know to that thing, your perspective around that thing, man, you knock it out the park, man. You knock it out the park. Here's another one as I end. let's say, hey, we go you know, walk a mile. You don't have to walk a mile at once. What if you walked a thousand steps and then we took a break and I don't know, looked at the mountains or something, right? I'm I'm looking at the mountains behind the camera. and you did that for like five or ten minutes.
And then you walked another thousand steps. And then you took a break and just had a conversation about life, whatever it was. And then you did it again. Well, you've you've got your mile. But it's a whole different thing when I say, let's go walk a hundred steps versus walking a mile. It's just the perspective on it. It's the way we're thinking about it and looking at it. So I hope and pray as I always do that this has added some value, giving you something to consider.
Something to help you to get clear about some options that you have in your life. Yeah. Hope and pray that it's been an encouragement, that it has edified you, built you up, helped you to see yourself, most importantly, see things in life, see God who has created all of this and made all of this possible. pray that you that you see all of these things, right? In a much better way.
In a much better, much better way. I hope and pray that, yeah, by you watching this and listening to this, that possibilities have become your perspective. It's powerful. It's all possible with the right perspective. It's all possible with the right perspective. Whatever it is for you. You name it, you frame it.
You put it into your context. Whatever it is, it's possible with the right perspective.
Yeah. And the perspective is in your control. You can change it anytime you want. It's a God given gift. You can choose to change how you see things.
Which will help you to change how you show up and how you approach it. And ultimately, what you experience in this life. Love you guys, praying for you guys, believing in you guys. Javel, CW Lynch. Esther, what what? Helping you to see what you are, what you are working with, and hopefully inspiring you to give yourself permission.
To come into a realization of what you are going to do with it all.
