Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
On the podcast today, I want to talk a bit about small steps, small things that we do that add up over time towards the big thing that we want to accomplish. Welcome back to success with Srini. Happy Saturday morning to you. I’ll keep it simple. I’ll keep it to the point. Now, this discussion is about small steps. This is in line with goals and goal setting and accomplishing projects and all that. And this podcast is all about that. And I have spoken about goals and goals, goal setting for a long amount of time. And that should be some podcast episodes that you can go back in time and listen to primarily from January, to February of this year.
Now, I want to share this, this formula, it’s a four-step formula for introducing small steps for attaining big goals. It doesn’t matter what the goal is, maybe you have a career goal or a financial goal. You know, whatever goal that you have fitness goal, health goal, whatever you have, everything starts with a small step. Lao Tzu said a journey of million miles starts with one step. And talking about small steps and the power of small steps, there is an incredible amount of literature available on the internet. And as I was thinking of doing a podcast episode on talking about small steps, and I wanted to convey this kind of express my thoughts on small steps, and the power of small steps, I was thinking, what else can I add, because there is so much already available. And I should be telling you just go Google this topic and read, which I think you should do anyway. You see, we know this, in order to accomplish any goal, we need to take action. And action is possible. Only when the actions are broken down into multiple steps, smaller chunks and small little steps can be done. That can be accomplished. Because here is what is now known. And This is also this principle comes from project management, which is when you identify something to its lowest level, any task, for example, who is going to work on it, how much time is going to take for them to work on it? Does this individual who’s gonna work on it has the capability and this task, what are some of the unknowns of this task? So we know the time we know the effort know the unknowns. And it’s only possible if you can, if you can break a bigger step into smaller steps, the more the smallest upside, the easier for you to contain the effort, the time, and the unknown, simple stuff. It’s product management stuff.
So we do the same thing. In our goals in our life, life goals, whatever life goals you have, should break them down into smaller, little steps. And then each step is further broken down into sub-steps to a level where you have full control out of the unknown full control of the time and full control of the effort that you’re going to put in. Now as you start now, putting them on a timeline and start working on them, you start to see that you’re accomplishing them. And then slowly they’ll start adding up to the bigger accomplishment over time. For example, I want to lose 100 pounds. What do I do? It’s very simple. I take the lowest step what is the lowest step? The last step is I want to drink four glasses of water every day for the next 30 days. Just drink a glass of water. What time should I drink? I’ll wake up drink, and three hours later drink. Then three hours more later drink, I can schedule, I’m going to I will take a 24-hour timeline divided by three times before you know and then go after it. Simple. Okay? Or take a taller timeline and just divide by four that like every three hours, one glass of water, basic, basic step. And I do that over the next 30 days. And then I now know that okay, so I have some data, right? I’m successful in drinking four glasses of water every day, at a set time for 30 days. Remember, most people don’t talk about this, and I’m not seeing many people talk about this, which is the goal behind every goal is to build a sustainable habit. Every time you have successfully achieved your goals and you start analyzing those goals.
You’ll start to see that there are some habits that you either changed or you dropped or you created and And you, and you did all those three pretty sustainably. I guarantee you, that’s what has happened to you. You may not know this. But if, if you really go deep and spend time exploring yourself, and analyzing all the things that you have done, you’ll start to see some patterns. So here’s a formula on how to take the power of small steps in my understanding. The first and foremost is that when you take the smallest step, okay, it should not take you away from that which you’re already doing. Drinking one glass of water kettle in the morning doesn’t change anything, literally doesn’t take away anything from my life. And it’s a good place for me to start because it gives me hope, it gives me the possibility, it tells me that yeah, you know, yeah, we will do it. Listen, somebody who’s trying to lose 100 pounds on 50 pounds, you know, the struggling with it, and they’re frustrated, and they want to win. And it’s one glass of water that doesn’t change a life. Now, if I ask the same individual to run for a mile. That’s a lot.
And they can’t do that. And they give up. So every small step, the first thing is it should not take you away from whatever else is going on with your life. Second, every small step should not add more unknowns, to what is already there in your life. See, you’re dealing with so many. So everybody, all of us, we’re dealing with stuff. So much going on in our lives. Anything that you introduce, should not create more unknowns. Because of finite time, 24 hours, and lots of things that we need to accomplish, we don’t want to delete more unknowns. Now, every third part of this is every step new step should somehow create invisible growth. See, every time I have worked with any weight loss clients never did that ever. Anybody tells me that drinking water is bad. Not a single client ever said that to me. People told me they don’t like the taste of water. I’ve heard that. But nobody said that drinking water is bad. So they also agreed that by drinking water, they are going to become healthy. It’s a good habit. They tell me this. That means the acre in their mind that yeah, I’m growing as a result of doing this.
So there is invisible growth, from that step specifically drinking a glass of water. Ideally, it should be enjoyable, but not necessarily enjoy all the time. So invisible growth is is every small step should have an element of invisible, invisible growth. And the last step is that somehow that step that you’re taking, it has to be ingrained into your mind that if I do this over a long period of time, I know that I will win. So every small step should have an element of a win in the larger context. So Winning is important for tanks. Now, if any of the things that you’re engaged in or you’re engaging in right now, doesn’t satisfy this for any action that you’re taking any step that you’re taking, I’m not saying you will not accomplish your goals. But then, when you identify those steps in this four-step with this port parameters, I think that’s the right way to say it’s more sustainable. It will be sustainable, you’ll enjoy the process, and it’ll be more fulfilling. So given the life that we live and everything that’s going on, that’s happening that’s going on around us, we tend to overlook the power of small steps. Lao Tzu said, you know, the distance of a million miles starts with one. And there are so many other metaphors. You know, how do you eat an elephant, you know, you start eating an elephant with one, one bite at a time, something like that. So there are so many metaphors being shared and being talked about and all that. The key is taking that small step and agreeing that small steps do add up, which, which they do, and we need to have we need to build that that mental map for that.
Give this a try, let’s say you have some goals that we are planning for this year, or maybe for next year, give this a try and see if you can bring any habit, a new habit, or something around to support your goals and use this formula to, to break that habit into multiple steps, action steps and see how this brings you closure as you know, build that character within you to get to that outcome. Okay, give it a try. I hope I tried this. This is such a difficult concept to convey. But I hope I did. Okay. In expressing here. I’ll come back. We’ll talk more. This is the part of the year-end of the year. So we’re getting there. So December, and January is all about goals. We’ll talk more about this. And I’ll have more episodes on this. But for now, this is it. Have a wonderful, wonderful Saturday. I’ll catch up with you, Manana. Stay tuned.