Start Small, Stay Small, if You Want to Make it Big

“Fuck it, I’m doing it.”

“Doing what?” His pal asked him. There was a pause, slick with electric anticipation as Gaudí’s grin swamped his entire face. Then the realisation struck. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes,” Gaudí said, “I’m doing it.”

And then? He did.

Antoni Gaudí began building La Sagrada Familia in 1882. You know the one; that breathtaking basilica, all towers and spires, brimming with intricate geometry and detailed architectural design. It’s gorgeous.

And it’s unfinished.

138 years it’s been under construction — and it will be for another six years to come. That’s a century-long project underway even now and the artist? The designer? The bloke who birthed this building right there from within his creative womb?

He’s buried inside it.

Gaudí died when only a quarter of La Sagrada Familia was complete.

1926 he died. After 44 years of tireless work and he’ll never know it has a gift shop.

And isn’t that what we’re all so terrified of? Isn’t that the one thing that causes all of us creatives to stop before we’ve even begun, too afraid to tackle this mammoth project for fear that we’ll never quite see it through? Or worse — that we will. And it’ll suck.

We all have a basilica we want to build.

We all have That Idea™, the one that’s chalking off tally marks onto the walls of our skulls until it can finally be unshackled and set free. The problem is, there’s just so damn much to do — the logistics and the planning and the tiresome admin emails to Diane who never quite responds on time — and we have no idea how to do any of it. So we just… don’t.

But it’s not because we don’t want to. Nor because we don’t know-how. It’s simply because we’re so overwhelmed we don’t know where to start. And then we’re afraid that once we do start, we’ll never finish.

But Gaudí did it.

He swallowed back the fear and he turned this expansive idea zipping around in his brain into a 120g bar of Dairy Milk Wholenut (chunks). When he woke up that morning and scribbled his idea onto whatever kind of iPad’s they used back in the nineteenth century, he didn’t write:

Today’s to-do’s:

1. Design and construct a bloody big basilica within the next 140 years.
2. Ten minute HIIT workout with Luis down the street.
3. Survive a famine.

No. Because that would’ve been a suffocatingly scary goal to even contemplate, much less accomplish.

What he probably did write was:

9am: grab a graphite pencil.

10am: rough sketch.

11am: breathe, relax, don’t stress, things take time. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day right? Or does that saying not exist yet?

12pm: lunch. Some kind of exotic fruit I imagine.

1pm: workout with Luis. Ask if he fancies helping me on a project.

2pm: Google what a basilica actually is.

You see?

He broke it into segments. Into chunks of whole nut chocolate. Because nobody can consume an entire 120g bar of Dairy Milk in one mouthful (trust me, I’ve tried). So instead we break it into pieces, knowing that the only way to get anything supersized complete is to start small.

Rather than panicking about all there is to be done, have a square of Cadbury’s and think about it. Draft out all the steps involved. Brainstorm things that you need to do, things that need outsourcing, things that could go wrong. Jot down the details, the tools, the ideas, the goals, the reminders, the doodles, the time and date and phase of the moon. Then pick one — preferably the first one — and start there.

Starting with the smallest, possibly easiest step is better than never starting at all.

Knitting is created one loop at a time. Books are written word by word. Movies begin as unfamiliar faces sat around a table, opening up a script. Public speakers start by stepping out onto the stage. Classical pianists first began by finding middle C. A Subway sandwich starts out as just bread. Tap dancers perform one heel kick at a time. Dolls houses are built room by room.

And so are entire basilicas.

The less you give yourself to do — the less there is to get done, you know? What if Gaudí had a dissertation to do, rather than a landmark to build? Been there my friend. Got the tear-stained t-shirt. And I also got the degree. How? Because I broke it into pieces. I planned chapters, I drafted points, I compiled research, I bullet-pointed notes, I did a couple paragraphs a day, I took my time, I went easy on myself (if you ignore all the times that I didn’t) and I did it, one word at a time. I started small. And then I stayed small.

This is how you prevent a pile-up on your plate.

This is how you ensure targets get met, by turning each task into a bite-size, digestible chunk. And with each mouthful swallowed, you begin to tick-off your to-do list (as in: complete. Not irritate) and realise that actually, you are capable. You are doing it. You’re getting things done. It was never that you couldn’t. You just weren’t starting small enough.

That’s the trick to consistency. That’s how you build — and keep building.

Don’t rush to tackle The Big Things™ now that you’ve finally begun.

Don’t think that just because you’ve started, you can now take it all on at once. Creativity is like claymation. The final result, the stop-motion movie, it’s not a product of sentient clay figurines, cast as actors from a tiny clay agency, in which they prance around on a dolls-house sized set, performing lines and shooting scenes and returning home to their sculpted vase wife at the end of days filming.

Claymation films — Wallace and Gromit, Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride — are created from a sequence of meticulous and intricate frames, compiled. Only an infinitesimal portion of the clay models are moved between each frame; a mere inch, a bent finger, a curved eyebrow. The continuity is a product of a series of still-images stacked together to tell a showstopping story.

Creativity is continuity. It’s momentum built up, inch by inch, in tiny increments. It’s the careful attention to each element within the process — things that are imperceptible to the consumer but paramount to you, the creator. It’s the small steps that accumulate into the largest leaps.

But you have to take it one step at a time.

You don’t emerge out of the womb running. First you’re born, then you crawl, then you waddle, then you fall. But you don’t give up. You get up. Then you walk, perhaps a little faster, then faster still and soon enough you’re sprinting, but only because you’ve mastered every single step in your stride. You’re focused on one foot after another, not the entire track expanding outward from beneath you.

If you take on too much at once, the clay cracks. The scenes don’t flow. The burnout sets in. Exerting too much energy in too little a time leaves you depleted. Gaudí didn’t lift an entire tower and glue it onto the side — that would have been exhausting if not a little bit deadly. Instead, he picked up a brick. And then another brick. And then another brick. And slowly, but surely, a basilica blossomed from the ground up.

That’s the trick: focusing on each tiny part of the process, as tiny parts. It’s how you keep moving once you’ve started, how you carry on despite the fear, how you overcome it. It’s how you avoid the burnout and maintain the momentum.

You have to start small and stay small — that’s how you achieve anything big.

Just remember: Gaudí didn’t doubt whether he could do it simply because he hadn’t done it within a week. He didn’t panic at the prospect and fear the unfinished. He didn’t let this colossal creation scare him from starting. He didn’t worry about messing it up or where to begin. He simply began. He found a place to start, then he carried on starting with every day that passed by. He knew he needed to be patient. To take each task bit by bit. To think small.

And then he died. But he died doing what he loved. Because creativity means being prepared to die for your creation. Okay, that’s a little dramatic, you don’t need to sacrifice your life to save your manuscript. But you do need to overcome your fear, work through the trials, build up that momentum. You need to know that, whilst you might not get to determine the outcome or the reception or the reward, you can sure as hell take charge of each step, each segment, each second of the construction. You can harness the moment and make it into a masterpiece.

You just have to start small, stay small and try to stay alive.

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