Johnny Cash has a song called “One Piece at a Time”. It tells the story of an auto worker who decides that since he can’t afford to buy one of the Cadillacs he helps build, he’ll just steal it one piece at a time. He does that over many years until he eventually has a working car that is a weird mesh of parts from many different decades. I’ve taken this approach in my own life. Not for stealing cars but as a way of getting stuff done effectively.
A few weeks ago, I had a lot of stuff to do in a short amount of time after work one day. Rather than focus solely on any one task until I had completed it, I bounced between several tasks, spending a little bit of time on each one before moving on to the next one. This helped me read a chapter of my book, work on a blog post, practice my Spanish, start packing for a trip, and do chinups before moving on to unicycling and juggling (I did focus on those last two tasks exclusively until I was finished with them). After all that, I still had plenty of time to take a shower and eat dinner before a friend called; we had a fairly lengthy conversation since I had hardly anything else to do afterward besides go to bed.
I was super productive during those few hours and I never felt like I was rushing or pushing myself too hard because I focused on one small piece at a time. This piecemeal approach has helped me a lot lately, whether I’ve used it at work or in my free time. Maybe it’ll help you, too. Either way, I’d love to hear about your experiences with it if you decide to try it out.