Decompose a big idea into small projects

Dashrath Manjhi had a big idea. A mountain blocked off his village from the nearest hospital. His wife had passed away because she didn’t receive care quickly enough. He realized a path through the mountain would be useful for his village, so he started digging one himself. 22 years later, he was done. It was his life’s task. All big ideas are made up of small projects and correspondingly smaller tasks. In software engineering, migrating an entire dashboard might mean starting by successfully migrating one metric from the legacy dashboard to the new one. In order to move a metaphorical mountain (or in Dashrath’s case, a literal one), start by moving a pebble. Your ego might tell you that you’re too good to start small (or that there’s not enough time, or that small can’t win, or that being realistic is the enemy, etc.). The end begins when you believe it. “Think big, start small,” says my friend Robleh. It’s simple, fundamental, advice I was lucky to receive early in my career when we…