You Can’t Eat The Elephant

So there is a popular saying:

“You can’t eat the elephant in one bite.”

The idea is that you need to break things down in little pieces to get them down. 

If you try to eat the elephant in one bite, I assume that your mouth would easily split in half and your face would literally explode. 

Similarly with projects, if you try to get to the nirvana end state in one fell swoop , the project explodes with complexity and risk, and you will fail miserably.

Thus, managing requirements and phasing them in chunks is critical to projects’ succeeding. 

Sure, customers want to get the Promised Land immediately–where the projects have all the “bells and whistles”–but you don’t want to sacrifice getting the train on the tracks for the accouterments either. 

Think big, but act small–little by little, one step at a time, you can actually eat an elephant. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Winding Path Of Life

Thought this was an interesting commentary on life. 

Perhaps, we seek a straight line–with no bumps or bruises–to go from where we are to where we want to be. 

But life has others plans for us. 

The road ahead is often winding and where we truly end up is often unknown. 

Certainly, staying frozen in place and doing nothing with our lives is not an option. 

So we move forward, one step at a time, and occasionally taking a leap forward. 

Also, sometimes, we have to take a few steps backward before we can advance again. 

Other times, we may even stumble and fall. 

Whatever happens, we continue to work our way towards the landing at the top to see what we shall see. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

There You Are

So my niece forwarded this over, and I thought it was really worth sharing…

It’s about how our lives are really a bunch of building blocks, and each thing we do contributes to the next step.

So we have to be careful all along the way to do the right thing–so we can achieve the results we want and can be proud of.

It goes like this:

“Watch you thoughts; they become words.

Watch you words; they become actions.

Watch you actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits, they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

Sometimes, we ask ourselves how we got to where we are today–almost as if we are surprised–but the reality is that most of the time, we are going through our lives inch by inch and step by step in an incremental and causal fashion. 

Yes sh*t happens–bad things (and good things), and they test and challenge us and take us to the next playing level.

But for the most part, we didn’t just arrive at this moment out of the blue, but rather given what G-d has given us, we mold ourselves brick by brick….until there we are. 😉

(Thank you to Chana Rivkah Herbsman and Minna Blumenthal)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)