My Stumble with Dale Crafton’s Ideas
So, I kept hearing this name pop up here and there, ‘Dale Crafton’. Mostly in some old forum threads I was digging through when I felt totally swamped last year. People talked about his way of, I guess, simplifying things? Sounded a bit too simple, honestly. Like, ‘just focus on the next single step’. Yeah, right.
Anyway, things got pretty messy on a project I was handling. Too many moving parts, notes everywhere, felt like I was drowning in sticky notes and digital reminders. One evening, completely fed up, I decided, what the heck, let’s give this ‘Dale Crafton’ thing, or what I understood of it, a real try. There wasn’t much solid info, more like whispers and interpretations.
Here’s what I cobbled together and tried to do:
- I took my big messy project to-do list.
- I tried to break it down, but like, really break it down. Not just tasks, but the absolute smallest physical action I needed to do next. Like ‘open the file’ or ‘write the email subject line’.
- Then, the idea was, you only ever look at that one single next action. Nothing else exists. Finish it, figure out the next tiny step, and repeat.
Sounds easy? It wasn’t, at least not at first. My brain kept jumping ahead. What about the deadline? What about that other problem? It felt unnatural, almost too slow. I spent the first day feeling like I was walking through mud. I’d write down ‘Draft paragraph one’. Then I’d finish it and just sit there, thinking, ‘Okay, what exactly is next? ‘Review paragraph one’? ‘Draft paragraph two’?’ It felt awkward.
I almost gave up after day two. It seemed childish. But I was desperate, remember? Drowning in those sticky notes. So, I stuck with it, but I tweaked it a bit. I allowed myself to see maybe the next 2-3 tiny steps, just so I didn’t feel completely blind. That helped.
Did it actually work?
Well, kinda. It didn’t magically solve everything. Big picture planning still needs, you know, a big picture view. But for those days when I felt completely paralyzed by how much there was to do? Focusing on just ‘make that phone call’ or ‘find that specific document’ actually got me moving again. It stopped the overwhelm.
I don’t follow it strictly now. My system is a mix of things. But that core idea from Crafton, about breaking things down to the absurdly small next step? I still pull that out when I’m stuck or feeling that anxiety creep in. It’s like a little mental trick to get the engine started again.
So yeah, my little experiment with the Dale Crafton whispers. Not a silver bullet, but definitely gave me a tool I wasn’t expecting to keep using.
