Photo by Rachen Buosa

This post's title is an old quote I've heard since my early edge, but I never gave it much attention or tried to go beyond this phase, just some words shared by older people in my family. Unfortunately, it took me years before I mind the importance of continuously complete small tasks and cut off with the idea of doing the whole job at once. Thanks to agility I'm changing my mind and acquiring new ways of working and producing. Before sharing with you why and how splitting any job or mission into small tasks helped me to achieve goals, I would like to share the pain encountered while trying to provide many efforts at once.

I remember the school-age when I was trying to prepare for my exams, I always adopt the same strategy by spending a whole day revising my courses, doing exercises, and once I got tired I close my books mark the material as completed. I often succeeded in my exams but many times I recognize that I could do better, but who cares, I wasn't obsessed about getting the highest score.

While I'm writing these lines, I remember the time when I want to get abs and being fit, I can't tell you that my motivation was something other than having the summer body. As a consequence, I start going to the gym and training in late April, But for 3 years consecutively, and contrary to my exam story, I've never reached my goal even though exercising 6 times per week for not less than two months. From these two stories shared above, I retain one lesson providing much effort in a short period may, or not work.

But what if I could change something to increase my chances to get a shaped body, maybe be coached by a professional! Yes, I did, maybe follow a restricted diet! Yes, I did, the only thing that I could do and not did it is starting my program earlier and going slowly but surely.

Few and permanent

A few years ago I've had the opportunity to discover agility at my university, then I worked on an agile project, 1 month after starting the project our web application was in production, users interacting with and we are having feedback, this is really amazing and so satisfying. I do believe that the key rules for such success were

• defining small but valuable feature
• continuously delivering

Breaking a big task down into small, more feasible ones helped me avoid procrastination and an overwhelmed workload. Here are some steps to follow for breaking a task down, but remember that you're the only one capable of doing that depending on the context, the knowledge, and priorities:

1 - Make sure you visualize the big picture, that means what the end product or make sure you visualize 2 - Think about the order, which one should be completed first, second, and so on... 3 - Define milestones: make a short plan which will help you stay on track. 4 - Complete your tasks early to have additional time for a final review

I do believe that permanent iteration pays in the end, with the adoption of a few concepts we gain confidence and progression:

• Going slowly, how many times have we heard that? but Have we ever enjoyed it as much as we can. Going slowly means to me doing things at my pace while giving all my attention and concentration to do it the right way and achieve high quality. Consider coding a small program or write a report, try to do it rapidly and at once, then do it slowly over 3 times within 1 day, then compare your results, I have no doubt that quality will differ.
• But Surely, yes make sure at any stage, you are performing with your best efforts, concentration, and passion.
• While doing things over many periods, make sure at the end of each milestone you create something tangible, deliverable, and useful.
• With dedicated attention to detail, because details make the difference.

How the rule of "few and permanent" affected my motivation and productivity:

• When I started scheduling my job and tasks as few ones completed over many steps, I begin to feel more confident, and sure about my achievement. In my unconscious mind, I'm convinced that I'll reach the expected goal whatever how many iterations I'll go through.
• My motivation and passion are often at the top, as completing tasks that are tangible, apparent, and useful. As a software engineer, I do love to deliver small features as soon as they can be deployed to production and being used by end-users, But this is certainly true in other fields of application.
• As my tasks are small, they are completed early so I can get feedback on their useless then I'll iterate to improve and optimize, rather than reviewing a whole job with many comments and issues to handle.

We always need to remind that

Overwatering can kill flowers, a moderate and continuous one give them chances to grow up