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October 29, 2024 6 mins

A good plan makes a big project more doable

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to map out your timeline. By figuring out
all the steps in a project and when you might

(00:24):
be able to do each step, you can have a
much better sense of whether something is doable and you
will have a much better shot at success if you
do give the project a whirl. We are coming toward
the end of this year, which means I am nearing
the end of this year's project of listening to all

(00:47):
the works of Bach. I have really enjoyed doing this project.
But key to making this project work was having a plan. First,
I needed to know that there were one thousand and
eighty works in the official BWV catalog. There are a
few more fragments and lost works and misattributed works, but

(01:07):
we don't need to become esoteric scholars here. One thousand
and eighty sounded good enough. Then I needed to know
how to split the listening each day. Well, theoretically, you
could just do three each day. Some of Bach's works
are much longer than others, and some of the long
ones are right next to each other in the catalog.

(01:30):
Listening to the Saint Matthew's Passion in Saint John's Passion
back to back would be more than four hours of listening,
whereas listening to three chorals back to back might be
less than three minutes. So probably marching straight through wouldn't work.
I also realized that I would like some variety. Bach

(01:52):
wrote choral works, organ works, orchestral works, but the BWV
numbers put all of the world works of a kind together.
So I created a schedule assigning myself different BWV numbers
from different parts of the catalog each day, which totaled
about thirty to forty minutes of listening. How did I

(02:14):
know the listening time. I searched for each BWV number
and saw how long the performances were. Creating this calendar
took a fair amount of work, but I would do
one to two months at a time so it was
never overwhelming. Then I would just spot check that I

(02:34):
was on track. After two months, would I have been
listening to about a sixth of the catalog? In any case,
The upside of having detailed assignments for each day was
that after all of that, the project was pretty easy
to stick to. On any given day, I am not
deciding what to listen to or how much to listen to.

(02:56):
I am just listening to a violin sonata and a
few corals today and something else tomorrow. At this point,
I've listened to almost everything. I think if you're going
to do any sort of project like this, you need
a detailed roadmap. I interviewed someone recently who was visiting

(03:17):
all of America's national parks. This required a detailed outline
of how many days it takes to see each one,
which are close, and which require lots of advanced reservations,
and which are a little bit more accessible. But doing
that meant that such a comprehensive project was actually doable

(03:38):
over a few summers. Likewise, folks who are participating in
National Novel Writing Month in November know that you need
to crank out fifty thousand words in a month. But
this is much more doable if you know that this
is sixteen hundred and sixty seven words on each of
thirty days, or two thousand words a day if you

(03:59):
plan to work to twenty five days taking the five
Sundays off, or twenty five hundred words a day if
you plan to take Saturdays and Sundays off if you
don't know your expected daily word count. On the other hand,
it's going to be a lot harder. Now, twenty five
hundred words a day might sound like a lot. That
means you are writing twenty five hundred words on Thanksgiving.

(04:23):
And if that does sound like a lot, well, maybe
you decide that you don't actually want to start this
project and then give up somewhere in the middle. And
that is a rational choice. But if you see where
you can fit twenty five hundred words a day into
your life, and you know that this is your expected pace,

(04:43):
you stand a pretty good chance of succeeding. Maps help
us get where we are going. We see how far
we need to go and how much time it will take.
That helps us make more rational choices. Most people understand
that you cannot drive five hundred miles and five hours

(05:06):
best case scenario, that is a nine to ten hour trip.
If you know where you will stop for lunch and
stop to stretch your legs along the road, you will
find it all more doable than if it looks like
just a huge number of miles. So if you are
contemplating any big project, map out your timeline. What do

(05:28):
you need to do when? How much do you need
to get done on each day to stay on track.
You might decide not to bite off the project, but
if you do, your odds of success will be good
if you have designed the timeline well. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making

(05:52):
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast

(06:17):
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.

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Laura Vanderkam

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