So, we're here at the Eiffel Tower in Paris today. Built by Gustav Eiffel, this tower was the world's tallest tower when it was built in 1889, and it was 324 meters tall until the Chrysler Building overtook it in 1930.
Today this is the most paid visited monument in the world with 25,000 people visiting it and ascending the tower every day on average.
Now, the interesting thing was when the tower was first being built, a lot of people didn't want it to be built, and all the artists in Paris got together and created a petition to stop the tower.
And in the petition, they said things like "We need to stop this useless and monstrous tower. It will dominate Paris like a gigantic black smokestack. All our other monuments will be humiliated and will disappear in this ghastly dream."
So, the Eiffel Tower not only had artistic problems to overcome, but also a whole host of engineering problems.
As an example, no company in France actually wanted to build the lifts that go up to the Eiffel Tower. That's because there were engineering problems due to the wind considerations as it was going to be the tallest tower in the world. There was wind from all angles and a lot of people said it just couldn't be done.
And that's what today's quote is about...
How Henry Ford Increased His Productivity... And How You Can Too
What do you actually do when you know you should do something, but there's a lot of problems that you need to overcome?
The quote I'd like to share today is from Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company.
A lot of people think that he invented the assembly line and invented the automobile. But those two things are actually false.
The automobile was invented by Karl Benz from Mercedes-Benz, and the assembly line... well, no one really knows who first invented it, but one of the large first documented uses of the assembly line was in Venice when they used to build ships by sending them down the river and assembling one part at a time.
So, here is the quote, and it is about breaking things down so that you can get more productive like Henry Ford did.
The quote goes like this:
"Nothing is particularly hard when you divide it into small jobs."
It's like the Confucius quote, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," or "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."
So, this today is all about productivity and the opposite of productivity, procrastination which you could perhaps be more familiar with.
And if you can master this, I believe you'll get more done in one day than 90% of the people out there, and that's a really important thing to do.
Here's when you should use this quote. You should use it when really you just don't feel like doing things.
So, you might be about to reply to an email that's really difficult, but you decide to check Facebook instead...
It might be when you really should get your finances sorted out, but instead of getting your finances you go and take a nap...
Or for example, you might need to create a business plan, but you decide to get a snack instead because it's easier...
So, that's when you should use it. And the reason it's important is because if you try and do two things at once, your brain gets overwhelmed. Your brain really can't multitask at all.
I'll give you an example of this. If I was to ask you right now what's 172 divided by 4 and what did you have for breakfast yesterday?
See how you can't do that at the same time? You can only do it one step at a time.
Let's look at another example. It's 6:00 AM and the alarm went off and you have to get out of bed. So your brain thinks, "Oh, that's too hard. I've got to open my eyes, get up, overcome the energy thing and it's so toasty warm in here. It's gonna be cold outside of bed." Your brain can't deal with that, so what you do is you break it into small steps.
So, as an example, we'll just say, first, I'm just going to open up my eyes. Once I open up my eyes I might just grab my phone and check Facebook, because that's really easy to do. Then I might just sit up in bed and then check Facebook. Then after that, what I'll do is I'll actually get out of bed...
By dividing it into small steps it makes it so much more doable.
I'll give you a bigger example of this. When I got married, it was really overwhelming because we had to plan the wedding and then you have to sort out who to invite, then there was the celebrant, the venue, the speeches... all these different things...
It's overwhelming, so we just procrastinated for about a month or so. But what we found is if you divide it into small steps it becomes easy.
However, the opposite of the quote is also true. What I mean by that is if something is still too difficult it means you haven't divided it into small enough jobs yet.
If something's still too difficult, you haven't divided it into small enough jobs. So, you might have a wedding and then underneath that, you might have three things and one of them is finding a wedding celebrant.
But if that's still too difficult, it means that you've got to divide it into smaller pieces. So what has to happen in order for you to find a wedding celebrant? You might have to jump onto Google and type in "wedding celebrant Sydney".
So if you break it down in that small piece, then your BS (your belief systems) don't kick in. Your brain doesn't think, "Oh, I can't do that," or "It's gonna be too hard," because everyone can do that. Everyone can jump onto Google and Google something.
And if you can master this - just breaking things into small steps as opposed to tackling and diving into the whole task at once - then you'll be well on your way to achieving a lot more with a lot less stress as well.
I hope you enjoyed this video and blog post. If you've got anything to add please put it in the comments below. I make these videos because it's helped me and I would love for them to help as many people as possible, so please hit the share and like button if you liked it as well. I really appreciate it and I hope to see you in the next video.
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