I want to dive a little deeper into the concepts that I mentioned in last week’s post, “Going Bolt to Bolt.”

This core principle has to do with reframing the problem, breaking a challenge into smaller and smaller units until you can’t break it down any more.

We live in a world of action. We do tasks every day—routine, mundane, interesting, and exciting tasks. Tasks that are easy, and tasks that are difficult. A secret that has taken me a long time to fully understand is that we can only focus our attention on one thing at a time. We can only consciously DO one thing at a time.

This post assumes a lot. It assumes that that you’ve narrowed your options down to the one project that you are going to focus on, and that you are committed to it. I know, that’s a loaded assumption. But let’s dive in.

I generally look at problems the same way as everyone else. I see the overwhelming amount of work ahead, all the things I am going to have to do, and the gaps in my knowledge. But what my brain does automatically, is start to break these steps into smaller and smaller achievable objectives. I stop focusing my attention on how much I have to do, and instead I focus my attention on the few steps that I can do, and then I DO them.

Going bolt to bolt is a way I mentally break up 80 feet of climbing into 10 bolts that have 8 feet between them. Now my attention is on the 8 feet that I occupy, and I am only worried about the bolts I am between. Then I break that 8 feet into smaller units. I am looking at the holds on the wall, I am scanning for the sequences that I will have to do to get to each hold, the movement that I will have to do. Maybe between the bolts where I am hanging, this particular 8 foot section, there are 10 moves, and maybe half of them are easy, so I don’t focus so much on the hand holds, but I focus my attention on other details, like the feet, body positioning. The other 5 moves, these are little more challenging, so I have to pay closer attention. Maybe there is one foot hold that is slick like glass, and I am worried I am going to slip off, so for that entire 8 feet, really, I’m more worried about that foot than anything else. Check that bolt off the list, onto the next.

Going bolt to bolt is an initial assessment. It’s taking inventory of what you have to do, at a really high level of detail.

Let’s go onto an example that we can all relate to (I hope).

At some point, you will have to clean your house. One of those tasks is cleaning the floors. Because I have three big dogs, I usually sweep before I can vacuum, otherwise the fur will clog the machine. After I sweep, I vacuum the floor to get all the dirt I didn’t get by sweeping, and then I mop, sometimes twice, because these guys are filthy.

As you can see, there are a lot of steps to this one task, but which task did you think I was talking about?

Cleaning the house? Cleaning the floors? Sweeping?

It’s more about perspective, isn’t it, and where we choose to focus our attention.

We’re not done yet, just like in the climbing example, we can break sweeping down even more. What order are we going to sweep the rooms? What sort of movement is involved? (Walking, moving your arms, bending, speed.) What tools do you need? (The broom, the trash can, the dustpan.)

We can break it down even more, but we begin to enter into the realm of the automatic, the things that you no longer think about, such as: How do you hold the broom? How do you move through the room? How do you breathe while you move around the room?

We could probably break it down further, but I’ll stop there and discuss.

This level of detail may seem absurd (and I did that on purpose), but this is the sort of high-level detail that my climbing partners and I discuss every week at our crag-side meetings as we try to figure out how to do a three-move sequence. We continue to break down challenges, and refine them into this level of detail, down to their simplest units.

I can remember learning to play the viola when I was 10 years old, and having to do a similar exercise. We spent an entire week (if not more) learning how to hold the instrument, how to hold the bow, how to move our arms, how to move the bow across the strings. All before we ever learned to play a note.

The real question, and I’ll have you think on it this week, is why does it sound silly when we apply this mental exercise of breaking down all of the details and steps with something simple like sweeping? And what if I were to tell you that I use the exact same process with the most complex problems as well?

Everything can be broken down into a single manageable task. Even the most complex problems are made up of a finite number of issues that compose them. All you have to do is begin training your brain to see your tasks broken down into their individual parts, so that you feel you can accomplish them. If it still feels overwhelming, keep breaking it down, divide tasks into two, or three. Keep going until you feel that you can do one, and then start ticking them off.

Because you can only do one task at a time, start with the ones you know. We’ll worry about the rest in a bit. Till then….