Large projects can be overwhelming to anyone, but they can be a nightmare for perfectionists. The desire to do everything, do it quickly, and do it right can lead to frustration and so much procrastination it’s hard to even get started!
There’s a way to reduce the stress and feeling of overwhelm without diving right in and trying to tackle an entire project at once.
The concept of “chunking” projects has a long history of success for everyone, but especially so for perfectionists.
It’s a great way to make progress without feeling stressed out or tackling more than you can handle at a time.
What is “chunking?”
Chunking is a way of breaking down a project or assignment into smaller pieces that are easier to handle. You can either chunk something down by scope, by time, or both.
Scope
This means that you break the assignment down into smaller assignments. You create mini-assignments or milestones that you can easily complete on their own each time you work on it. By the time you’ve finished them all and put them together, you’ll have completed the entire project.
Time
This is another way of chunking projects down. Instead of dividing it into milestones, you divide it into work periods. For example, if you think the overall assignment will take you 4 hours, you can break it down into work periods of 15 or 30 minutes each. When you go to work on it, you set a timer for that amount of time and quit when the timer goes off.
Both
Another popular method of chunking is to break the project down into both milestones and work periods. You then work on each milestone during a work period and again, quit when the timer goes off.
Which method is best?
That depends on you and your personality.
If procrastination is a serious issue you’re dealing with, then chunking by both time and scope might be the best thing for you to do until you’ve made more progress over your perfectionism. In this case, strictly limit your work sessions to no more than 30 minutes, and you might even try 10 or 15 minutes until you get the hang of the system.
If stress or being overwhelmed is your main issue instead of procrastination, try the method all three ways and see which one produces the best results for you. Then incorporate that one into your routine.