Chunky Monkey Builds A Plane

Let me make something perfectly clear right from the outset here. This blog is not about monkeys. There are no monkeys, apes, marmosets, gorillas, gibbons, chimpanzees or any other type of Simian you care to mention in this post. So if you have been given a project to create the complete works of Shakespeare using an infinite number of moneys on an infinite number of typewriters and you’re looking for tips, you’re in the wrong place.

I just liked the sound of chunky and monkey. I toyed with funky and hunky but they didn’t quite create the internal pictures that are tree-swinging friends do, not for me anyway. On reflection, I suppose I could have gone for A Hunky Funky Chunky Monkey and even thrown in Spunky for added effect, but I needed to actual type this blog rather than spend 2 hours thinking of the title. So now we have that straightened out, let’s get on with it.

Do you feel overwhelmed a lot? I would say that well over 80% of people that come to me for life coaching, regularly feel overwhelmed. Other people that I speak to socially often mention the feeling of overwhelm and it seems to me that along with procrastination and no win no fee attorney’s, it’s the scourge of modern society.

The double whammy with feeling overwhelmed is that it can often lead to paralysis and inaction at exactly the time we need to do be getting stuff done. Which in turn leads to more crushing feelings because work just keeps piling up.

Most people, and I do stress MOST, feel overwhelmed because they see the big picture and simply do not know where to start. There are exceptions to this. A few people get overwhelmed because they can only focus on the small stuff and can’t ever imagine getting to the bigger picture. Ask yourself which group you fall into? If it’s the latter, save yourself some time and rather than reading the rest of this post go and search YouTube for humorous clips of cute puppy dogs driving cars the wrong way down busy streets. Let me know if you find any.

Imagine your boss tells you that to keep your job you have to make a plane and have it on his desk by Thursday week. Not a model you understand, he wants a full size 747. Obviously you can’t call it a Boeing 747 for legal reasons, so we’ll call it a Boing 858. That’s quite some task you have on your plate there, and it would be easy get overwhelmed and buckle under the challenge.

So what do you do?

If such an undertaking overwhelms you, here is why. You’re first response would almost certainly be to make a mental picture of a plane in your head. That would be swiftly followed up by a voice saying something along the lines “ How the **** am I supposed to do THAT! He’s insane; I knew I shouldn’t have poured mercury into his coffee. No way can I do that!” Or something along those lines. Then you will start to get more and more agitated as you start to think you’re out of your depth.

If on the other hand you’re chilled with the task at hand because you like a bit of a challenge, you’ll have constructed a whole different picture and soundtrack inside your head. You’ll probably be thinking “Right, I’m gonna need some rivets” And you’ll see yourself walking into Lowes (or B & Q if you’re in the UK) and buying 8 tones of rivets.

The difference between the two responses to the same situation is the ability of the second person to chunk the task down. Chunking is the art of taking something that needs to be done and breaking it into easy to manage chunks. I accept that there are quite a lot of chunks to building a plane, but they do get built so somebody is dealing with them.

If in the first instance you’re boss had given you a list that said something like this:

Please do the following tasks in this order and do not move from one task to another until the first is completed.

1. Order 6 tons of rivets to be delivered next week
2. Order 175 gallons of bright yellow paint
3. Ask Bob in Finance if he can give you a check for $7.6m
4. Call Frank at Rolls Royce and tell him you need 4 large engines
5. Send an e-mail out to all employees asking if anybody knows how to fly a plane
6. Order 5,000 bags of small peanuts
7. Borrow some step ladders from maintenance
8. See if you can find a cockpit on Ebay
9. Ask the janitor if he can remove the door to my office and widen it slightly
10. Buy a black box, any type of black box will do, as long as its orange

You’d probably raise an eyebrow, but you’d get on your merry way relaxed in the knowledge that your boss is mental and you’ll have his job sometime soon anyway.

That’s all chunking down is. Taking a large task and breaking it down to smaller tasks and making sure your focus remains on the individual task at hand. Nobody get’s overwhelmed at having to order some rivets, but the thought of such a huge undertaking as building a plane, is an altogether different matter.

How do you deal with large projects and could you make them seem easier by adopting the habit of chunking them down?

Note: This approach also helps with dealing with procrastination.

Sorry about the lack of primates but if you are over 18 and don’t get offended easily check this out it’ll hopefully make you smile. No monkeys were harmed in the making by the way, although the penguin did resent having his small arms made fun of.

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12 Comments So Far.

1. 

   Comment by Tabs on 24 April 2008:

   I was so looking forward to the monkeys, but no monkeys here.

   Thanks for the great post I am someone who has a week to build a “plane” and have gotten somewhat overwhelmed at the size of the task mainly because I did not chunk it down to small enough pieces, thanks this was the little push I needed.

   Note to self:
   Chunk it down to smaller pieces
   Prioritize
   And finish tasks in chronological order.

   I think I got it, thanks
2. 

   Comment by Tim Brownson on 27 April 2008:

   Sorry about that Tabs, I’ll make sure I have either monkeys or at least a cute puppy dog in a blog very soon. Just for you ;-)

   And yeh, you got it!
3. 

   Comment by Heidi on 2 May 2008:

   I enjoyed this! Funny with great information. I don’t think I would know who I was if I wasn’t always overwhelmed. Overwhelmed is my best friend. Love your blog.
4. 

   Comment by Peter (Life Coaching) on 2 May 2008:

   Great post.

   Reminds me of the saying, ‘How do you eat an elephant?…One bite at a time’.

   See no monkeys but we have an elephant!
5. 

   Comment by Tim Brownson on 4 May 2008:

   @ Heidi, thanks a lot and I just Stumbled your site. Some very cool stuff in there. Do you know Kitchentablemedicine.com? If not, check it out it’s a great site.

   @ Peter. Cheers! I just tried to check out your site but couldn’t access it. Is there a problem at your end or is it just me?
6. 

   Comment by Chris on 5 May 2008:

   Chunking it down. Great one. I am in the process if starting a huge project and my partner and I are pretty much “chunking it down.” Now I have a term to use.
7. 

   Comment by Tom Volkar / Delightful Work on 8 May 2008:

   Tim thanks for this. Sometimes the simplest answer is the answer.

   “Most people, and I do stress MOST, feel overwhelmed because they see the big picture and simply do not know where to start. There are exceptions to this. A few people get overwhelmed because they can only focus on the small stuff and can’t ever imagine getting to the bigger picture. Ask yourself which group you fall into?”

   I do think that there are more groups than these two. I couldn’t place myself in either.
8. 

   Comment by Tim Brownson on 10 May 2008:

   @ Chris I feel sure it will help with such a major project, best of luck with it.

   @Tom - Hey good to have you drop by. I’d love to hear more about your circumstances. I’m racking my brain for any other reason for overwhelm and can’t come up with anything that doesn’t fit into either one of those categories.
9. 

   Comment by Tom Volkar / Delightful Work on 11 May 2008:

   Tim since you asked. I seldom feel overwhelmed from not knowing where to start even though starting can take care of the overwhelm. ;) Isn’t overwhelm mostly a mental condition of deeper/larger issues? For example I can feel overwhelmed when I have too many opportunities because of over-promising. I also get a bit whacky when I have too many non-delightful tasks on my plate because freedom is such a dear value for me.

   After thinking about it perhaps you are right. Perhaps I’m not feeling overwhelm at all in these cases but instead some kind of regret for making poor choices.
   The antidote then of course is gratitude.
10. 

    Comment by Tim Brownson on 12 May 2008:

    @Tom - Tne antidote to life is pretty much always gratitude, right? ;-)
11. 

    Comment by Vered on 19 May 2008:

    OK, I am officially hooked on this website. You make me laugh AND think at the same time!

    I do feel overwhelmed at times, and it’s interesting to think that if I can break things down a little, they would feel more doable. My mom told me once, that when she brought me home from the hospital (I’m her firstborn), she was overwhelmed at the thought that she now has to actually RAISE a human being.

    But then I started crying and needed a feeding and a diaper change, and when she concentrated on that, it all seemed quite doable, and the raising-a-human-being part still happened, even if she stopped thinking about it this way.

12. Pingback by Life Coach: How to Overcome Being Overwhelmed | InMyHeels.com on 4 August 2008:

    [...] Tim helped me experience the contrary by way of conversation and visualization. He told me to read this piece he wrote on his blog which perfectly summarized the need to chunk down to get things [...]

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