A man is standing at a table holding a pair of tweezers. With them he's placing a domino five millimetres tall at the front of a line. Behind it stand twelve more, each one about one and a half times the size of the one before. The last one is over a metre tall and weighs about 100 pounds. He needs his whole body to lift it into place.
Then he taps the tiny one with a pen. In a few seconds all thirteen are on the floor.
If you've got a goal so big you don't know where to start, this is how I break mine down. It fits on the back of an envelope, and it starts with something small enough to do today.
Small knocks over big
The man is a physicist called Stephen Morris, and you can find the video on YouTube. A domino can knock over another one about one and a half times its size. Keep going and it adds up fast. He reckons that with 29 of them, the last one would be as tall as the Empire State Building.
I wrote about this in Done Beats Perfect, because it's how I think about big goals.
I first came across the idea in Russell Brunson's book Expert Secrets, where he passes on a lesson from Tim Ferriss. Instead of chasing every possible task, find the one big domino. That's the one that, once it falls, makes a load of the other stuff irrelevant.
Most of us can't push the big one over on day one. That's fine. You line up the small ones in front of it.
Working backwards
I start a year out. What's the one domino that would make me feel I'd got real momentum by then? That's the big one at the back.
Then I work towards the front. I ask what needs to happen in the next 90 days for that one to fall, then this month, then this week. Last of all comes today's domino, the tiny one I could tap with a pen.
Each one only has to be big enough to knock over the next.
If it's not in the diary
The small ones only fall if they're in the diary, though. Most things I schedule get done. Most things I don't schedule, don't.
Moving my body is my best example. When I'm busy, a walk or a run is the first thing to go, even though I'm better at everything else after one. So I put it in my calendar like any other appointment, with a reminder.
I make it specific too, like "5 mile trail run" or "20 minutes of mantra based meditation". A vague domino is easy to step round. A specific one with a time next to it is much harder to ignore.
Find tomorrow's domino
Tonight, before you close the laptop or put your phone down, pick the big thing you want this time next year. Then find the smallest domino in front of it, the one you could tap tomorrow. Put it in your diary with a time next to it, and tap it.
