Is Your Twig Too Big For The Hole?

Is Your Twig Too Big To Fit In The Hole?

This might help…

A movement caught my eye. A flutter up. A flutter down. It was a wren with a long slender twig trying to get it into the small opening of the birdhouse. Up-down, up-down. Holding a stick in its beak wider than the birdhouse, it repeatedly tried to make it work.

I was rooting for it. “Turn it sideways. Break it into pieces. Smaller twigs,” I kept saying.

Finally, I tired of watching. It wasn’t listening to me, anyway.

So I asked myself instead. “What are you trying to do that is too big to fit into the hole?”

It turns out there were lots of things. The hole I was thinking about was time. Trying to fit too much into the tiny space of time called a day is something too many of us do.

Imagine an entire flock of wrens hopping up and down trying to make something work that really can’t. That’s us. No wonder so many of us feel overwhelmed.

There are only so many holes—hours—in a day.

That will not change. We can’t change the size of the hole. We can only change what we try to put into it.

I am a one-woman business. I coach, teach, and write and sell books, and all that entails. Plus, I take care of a garden, a small house, and my husband. And myself. Lots of big twigs.

There is plenty of research showing not only the futility of trying to do too many things at one time but also the dangers of it. But what to do? If you are like me, you need practical solutions.

So here are three ways I am learning how to get that twig in the hole for myself.

Turn it sideways.

Ask, how else can I get this done? The way I, or anyone else, have always done it is probably not as effective as it once was. Try doing it differently. That may be a different time of day or an alternative method. One way to discover the answer is to pretend to be someone else looking at the solution. How would they do it?

Break it up into small sticks.

Do a little at a time. It doesn’t all have to be done in a day. I take this method to an extreme sometimes, but it works. I have some house painting projects to do this summer. On my daily teux deux list, I have the word “paint.” It shows up every day.

But on busy days, or days I need a break, I do tiny things towards that goal. That may mean that I find the paintbrushes one day. The next day could be to find the paint. The next day, it could be to put it all together in one place. Small sticks. I’ve painted the entire house this way.

Do a little each day method works with everything.

Write a book five hundred words at a time. Or thirty minutes a day. Learn a new language, ten minutes a day. Break exercise into small bits. Five minutes a day, a walk around the block.

What often stops us is we don’t know how to do something small that we don’t want to bother with, or are afraid to learn, or think we can’t. Break up the learning. Find a video one day. Watch it the next.

You will know how big of a hole (time in the day) you have. Size your twig accordingly. Increase the size of your twig based on the size of the hole in your day.

Get another twig.

Sometimes that’s the answer. What we are doing won’t work. Or we realized we don’t enjoy doing it, and it won’t ever get it done.

Wrong twig. Pick another.

Just because we have spent time on something doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it. Children know this well. They move on from toys and games and things that used to interest them with lightning speed. We think we have to stick with something. Not true.

Seth Godin often talks about this. He calls it sunk costs. Leave them. Move on.

The point of the wren trying to get the twig in the hole was to build a nest. That’s what we are trying to do too. Provide a safe and comfortable place to live for ourselves and the ones we love.

And yes, the wren got the nest built. When I checked on it later, I noticed the sticks were much smaller than those he was trying to get into the hole—well done, wren.

And well done, you!

PS:
In case you are curious about wren nests. The male builds incomplete “dummy” nests in several cavities; the female chooses one and finishes the nest by adding lining. The nest has a foundation of twigs, topped with a softer cup of plant fibers, grass, weeds, animal hair, feathers.