I Can't Do It. It's Too Difficult.

byegonsarv

4.1K followers

Updated 10 years ago

"I can't do it. It's too difficult." This is what some 3rd grade kids told me right after I had given them the following simple math exercise:

Me: "What is difficult?"

Kids: "The exercise is difficult"

Me: "Really? What EXACTLY is difficult in it?"

Kids: "It's long!"

Me: "Hey, look! Let's start from the beginning! 1+2. Is it difficult?"

Kids: "No!"

Me: "How much is it?"

Kids: "3"

Me: "Plus 1?"

Kids: "4"

Me: "Plus 10?"

Kids: "14"

Me: "Minus 5?"

Kids: "9"

We continued like that and without ANY difficulty they were able to reach to the final answer, which was 1.

They were pretty happy that they had been able to solve that long exercise.

Then I gave them the second exercise, similar to the previous one. And you know what? They had not learn anything from the previous experience.

I was still writing when they were already complaining that the exercise was too difficult for them. I had to start again: "What EXACTLY is difficult in it?"

Kids: "It's long!"

Then suddenly one kid came and started to count, one-by-one and step-by-step.

And do you know what? Without ANY difficulty he was able to reach to the end and give the correct answer.

The Point?

In both cases the kids saw the long exercise, considered it too long (and too difficult) for them, and INSTANTLY gave up trying to solve it.

This situation describes pretty well peoples' everyday life. Also, it describes an average situation in IM world. You want to build a successful online campaign. You are in the learning process. Then you look at some of your competitions' websites and they look perfect. All the bells and whistles that they have included. You think that you should do and add all these important things to your website too. Yet the whole task looks clearly overwhelming. It's just too big. Too difficult.

Then you are right in this place where these kids, when they said: "Ohh... I can't do it. It's too difficult."

And then there is a temptation to give up and accept your fate: "It's not for me."

Am I wrong?

If I were wrong then why do why 95% of online marketing newbie quit in their first year?

The reason is the same - You look at that B-I-I-I-I-I-G exercise, you look at the mammoth website that you have to create and you feel you ARE NOT able to do it.

Yet if you started, one piece at a time, step-by-step, then it's not much harder than 1+2 in math. Right?

My Recommendation.

If a task seems too big, too overwhelming to us, we tend not to even start. We can reason and if the given task is clearly bigger than our abilities, we understand it's meaningless to even waste time trying it. So we don't even try.

Yet if you make that huge task into smaller, bite-size pieces, you are able to solve it. Or as there is a question: "How to eat an elephant?"

The answer is: "Bite by bite. Just a little bite." That's it. And you are in a relaxed mood, don't need to eat antidepressants :)