How to break down a big project into steps you can actually start

Some items sit on a to-do list for weeks. You read past them every morning. They aren't hard, exactly. You just can't see where to start, so your eye moves on to "reply to Sam" and "buy bin bags", which you can.

Those items are almost always projects written as if they were tasks. "Sort out the garden." "Launch the website." "Move house." Each one is really twenty jobs and a handful of decisions, folded into a single line. Breaking it down is how you unfold it.

This guide covers a method that works for anything from a dissertation to a kitchen refit, a worked example, and the mistakes that make a breakdown fall apart.

Why big tasks get avoided

It's tempting to call it laziness. It isn't. When a task is vague, your brain has to do two jobs before it can start: work out what the task involves, and then do the first part of it. The first job is the hard one, and it's invisible. You don't get to tick it off, and it doesn't feel like progress, so it's easy to put off.

A task like "Email three removal firms for quotes" has already had that thinking done. Starting it costs almost nothing.

There's also a stress effect. Unfinished goals nag at us. Psychologists E. J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found in 2011 that making a specific plan for an unfinished goal reduced how much it intruded on people's thoughts, even before they acted on it. A broken-down project is that kind of plan. I wrote more about this in the psychology behind task hierarchies.

The method

1. Write the outcome, not the topic

Start with one line describing what done looks like.

• Not "Garden", but "Garden ready for a party in July"
• Not "Website", but "New website live with the shop working"
• Not "Pension", but "Old pensions moved into one account"

An outcome tells you when to stop. A topic never ends.

2. List the parts

Underneath, write the main pieces the outcome is made of. Aim for three to seven. Don't sort them and don't worry about order yet. That comes later.

For "Garden ready for a party in July" that might be:

• Patio
• Flower beds
• Lighting
• Furniture
• Clear-up

If you find yourself writing fifteen parts, some of them probably belong together. If you can only think of one, you may have written a step rather than an outcome.

3. Break down only the part you'll do first

This is where most people go wrong. They try to plan every branch in detail on day one, run out of energy halfway through, and end up with a giant plan they don't trust.

Instead, pick the part you'll work on first and break that one down. Leave the others as single items. You'll break them down when you reach them, with whatever you've learned in the meantime.

4. Keep asking "could I start this right now?"

For each item, ask whether you could start it right now without thinking, and finish it in one sitting. If not, it has parts. Write them one level down.

A good bottom-level step has three qualities:

• It starts with a verb: email, measure, book, draft, compare, call.
• It has an obvious end. "Research patios" never finishes; "Compare porcelain and slate prices at two suppliers" does.
• It fits in one sitting, ideally well under an hour.

5. Pick today's step

Choose one or two steps to do today and put them where you'll see them. The breakdown is worth nothing if it lives in a document you don't open. If you use a Today list, star them.

A worked example: a house move

Here's the method applied to a real project, three levels deep in the part being worked on and rough elsewhere.

• Move house by the end of March
  • Sort out the removal
    • Email three removal firms for quotes
    • Compare quotes and book one
    • Confirm the date and access with the new landlord
  • Pack
  • Change addresses
  • Leave the old place

Only "Sort out the removal" has been broken down, because that's what needs doing first. Removal firms book up, so it's the urgent branch. "Pack" will be broken down in a fortnight, when it's closer.

When "Pack" comes round, it might look like this:

• Pack
  • Order boxes and tape
  • Pack one room per weekend
    • Spare room and loft
    • Books and kitchen cupboards
    • Everything else
  • Label boxes by room

Notice that "Pack one room per weekend" has its own children. Trees don't need to be the same depth everywhere. They go as deep as each part needs.

What a good breakdown looks like

You can tell a breakdown is working when:

• You can look at any branch and see what the next step is in a couple of seconds.
• Most bottom-level steps would take less than an hour.
• You're ticking off steps most days, even when the project is months long.
• The parts you're not working on are out of sight, so they're not adding noise.

That last point matters more than it sounds. A flat list of 60 steps for a house move is just as overwhelming as one line saying "move house". A tree lets the parts you're not working on fold away inside their parent.

Common mistakes

Planning too far ahead

Detailed plans for work months away are usually wrong by the time you get there. Plan the near part well and the rest roughly.

Steps that are really decisions

"Choose a removal firm" looks like a step, but it hides research and comparison. If a step involves a decision, the step before it is usually "gather what I need to decide". Make that its own task.

Steps that depend on someone else

"Get the landlord to confirm the date" isn't something you can do. "Email the landlord asking to confirm the date" is. If you're waiting on someone, tag it (#waiting works well) so you can check on it during your weekly review.

Breaking things down as a way to avoid starting

Breaking down can turn into procrastination. If you've spent twenty minutes refining a tree and haven't done a single step, stop and do the top one. The breakdown only has to be good enough to start.

Doing it on paper or in an app

You can do this with a pen. Indented lists in a notebook work fine.

The trouble with paper is that trees change. Steps get added, plans shift, parts move from one branch to another. An app that lets any task hold its own list makes that painless. That's the idea Tatask is built on: every task can hold subtasks, as deep as you like, and on the web each opened task becomes a new column so you can see the path from the goal to the step. There's more detail on the nested tasks feature page.

Whatever you use, the method is the same. For a more formal take on it, see how to use a work breakdown structure for everyday projects. If big tasks make you freeze, how to stop procrastinating on big tasks covers the emotional side. And my older post on breaking down complex projects has more strategies for work projects with several people involved.

A ten-minute exercise

Pick the item on your list that you've been skipping longest.

1. Rewrite it as an outcome.
2. List its parts.
3. Break down the first part until the top step starts with a verb and fits in twenty minutes.
4. Do that step today.

Most people find the project feels about half as heavy afterwards, before any real work has been done.

#planning#projects#breakingdowntasks#taskhierarchy