You might read a lot about how to get big tasks accomplished and how persistence is important when doing it but let me tell you about my experience which I received while doing my very first big project I faced back in High School that benefited me in the rest of my life. Mind you, I was the only student in the class to accomplish it and not even a geeky girl in glasses who later finished school with gold medal came close to finishing it.
Back at school (in Russia) we were often given a large task for summer holiday to keep us from doing what normal kids do, enjoying several months of warm summer days playing games with our friends in the back-yard. This was partly because my class happened to be humanitarian thus the standards of literacy were higher than they would be in a normal class. And partly because our Russian Language teacher was a fanatic of what she did and wanted us to work to her standards.
Our tasks usually included reading 3-5 of 300-500 page classic books such as Shakespeare ‘Hamlet’. And it was alright as you could get away without reading all of them. However, one summer she set a task you simply couldn’t get away with. The task was to write 76 pages of text by hand in a note-book. This was aimed to improve our literacy and calligraphy. The punishment was a big fat fail at the start of new semester and, more importantly, public humiliation in front of the whole class for not accomplishing it. So motivation was high enough and I set about thinking how to do the job. I wanted it to be done quick and efficient. Being a child, I still wanted to spend time with my friends outdoors.
How I got the job done?
I set my self a time-limit which was one week. Then I divided 76 pages of text by 7 to see how many pages I have to write per day. Because I had a few books to read that summer also, I thought that the text I will be rewriting would be from one of these books (two birds with one stone, eh?). The rest was just sitting 7 days for several hours each day rewriting pages of text from the book. I will be honest with you, my bum hurt from being in the chair for so long and I had to put extra padding on the sitting surface, my ears went red from hot light of the lamp above my paper but I got the job done in the time-frame I set. And it is the only thing that counts.
Why I was the only one to succeed?
(I found explanation in the book ‘The Success Principles’ by Jack Canfield which I read 12 years later)
I now clearly understand why many all of my class-mates failed at accomplishing this task. It was very hard for untrained children to focus each day for a period of time which requires them to voluntary sit at the desk doing tedious task while there are some many exciting options around to invest your time into. This is exactly why I decided to complete the task as quick as possible. Imagine if I decided to write 76 pages over the course of 3 months, which is how long our holidays lasted, by writing only 1 pages each day; then I would have to focus 76 times instead of just 7! Feel the difference? It would be easier to write 1 page rather than 10 pages in one go, but believe me setting yourself mentally is a much more difficult ask than doing an actual physical job. (My class-mates who followed this route completed just 14-26 pages out of total of 76).
Once you master the powers of focus and persistence you got the skills to accomplish anything you set your mind to.
Persistence and Time. After all that’s everything what it takes!
Morgan Freeman