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odellanderson

The Lesson of Little Tasks



Today. I want to talk a little bit about little tasks. You see a picture there or probably more like a .gif. And it's a .gif of my mailbox, the mailbox in front of my house. If you take a look at it, there's some things going on with this mailbox. It doesn't look right. It's got some issues, got some things that need to be taken care of. You'll notice that in the .gif, the front of the mailbox, the lid won't close. You flip it up. It flips back down. You notice the on the left side of the box where the little red flag should be to indicate to the mail carrier that, "Hey, I've got some mail in here that I want you to take away from here"... that's gone missing.


You'll notice there's some dirt, some debris. I think there was some graffiti there at one point on the side of the mailbox, that's there. You notice that the post, the white post that the mailbox is attached to- at the top of it, there shouldn't be like a pointy little cone thing, an ornamental thing and below the mailbox would be another decorative ornamental thing that should be there. And I'll provide a picture for what this actually should look like. There are some other mailboxes in the neighborhood that have everything attached to them.


Probably what you can't see from the picture also is if you take a step back you look at the mailbox. The post is probably leaning about 10, 15 degrees to the, to the left.


But anyway, the mailbox has some issues. The mailbox needs to be taken care of. And I've thought about doing things to fix this right, to either clean the mailbox or just get another mailbox, straighten up the post and get the ornamental things. It's a series of little things. And I've been looking at this thing for a couple of years now that it's been in this condition and I've done nothing about it.


And it hasn't been a big deal. We're not planning on moving. I'm not necessarily trying to get the curb appeal up, although it doesn't hurt to have those things in mind. It doesn't hurt to have that already going on, but I looked at it the other day and I was like, "You know what? This is a little thing that you should take care of."


And the thing about chasing the big goals in your life, the goals that God has for you, the things that God has placed in your life as you're at the stage of middle life and you're looking at what you want to do with the second half of your life, what are the big things you want to tackle? It's important to recognize that the big things that you want to tackle are actually made up of little things, little tasks that need to be completed.


And sometimes even there are a lot of little tasks in your life that are unrelated to the big thing that you want to go to that are just out there that you need to take care of because they're taking up some mental space. They're taking up some emotional space. There are a lot of uncompleted items.


And one thing that is important to establish as a habit, if you're going to go after these big goals is the habit of accomplishing all the little tasks that are along the way. And I'm sure that we all have a number of little tasks that are on our plate. So things that you just know, you should have taken care of, that you've been meaning to take care of. And you simply haven't, for whatever reason, either because it's been out of sight out of mind, you haven't dedicated the time, haven't been intentional about it.


But the message I'm going to leave you with today, as you continue to look at the .gif of my mailbox, not closing... And I promise you I will get that fixed. I will actually post another picture once I've gotten that taken care of to show that this is a little task that I do not intend to leave, undone. But use that .gif as motivation to examine your life in all the areas of your life, where there are little tasks that need to be completed.


And even if they're big tasks that needs to be completed, just recognize that they themselves can be broken into little tasks, little things that need to be taken care of that should be taken care of. And you want to begin to make a list of those things. You want to start to knock those out one by one, and you get a sense of momentum that is created from the continued accomplishment of knocking out little tasks.


I'm reminded of something from Dave Ramsey when he talks about knocking out your debt. Put them in order from smallest to largest, pay minimum payments and everything but the little one and attack the little one. And he says, listen, it's all about habit. It's all about getting you in the habit of knocking out these one by one, little by little.


So you start with the little one. First, you get a victory under your belt that provides momentum, provides motivation and provides inspiration. Use that model in your life. Use that model to knock out the little tasks that are in your life. The little things that just are nagging at the edges of your psyche, the edges of your willpower, and knock those things out and use that momentum and carry it into accomplishing all the tasks that lead up to the accomplishment of the big goals that God has for you.

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