Be Your Own Life Coach - #16 - Chunking Down

In the first article here for 2026 I wrote about New Year’s resolutions. Have you already forgotten about or given up on yours?

I wrote how a New Year resolution was exactly that, something that was for the whole year. Now, sometimes a BIG commitment like that can be frightening or seem like a huge thing to take on. Sometimes the thought of a task, or goal, or job being huge is the biggest de-motivator. You lose hope and energy before you even start! You can see it as too high a mountain to climb.

Let’s use weight loss as an example for a moment. If someone sets themselves the goal to lose a large amount of weight in the next year, it can seem like a huge task and a massive commitment.

Breaking a huge task down into smaller tasks is something the Americans call “Chunking Down”. Breaking it down into smaller more manageable “chunks”.

A New Year is a time when a lot of people think about making changes, but by now you may feel that you’ve missed that boat. New Year’s is over and its too late.

BUT, that is only if you set yourself the big chunk of time that is a whole year! You could chunk down your goals to a month, a week, or even a day! Or, you could start a new year of your own today and decide to have something achieved by this date next year.

If you’ve got something that you wish to change in your life. The best way to succeed is to set yourself targets. But how about setting a target over a shorter time. How about, for example, setting the target of getting out and walking just half a mile before this day is out? What about getting to the gym two times this week? What about deciding to save €50 by the end of this month?

You can “chunk down” anything that seems to be overwhelming. If you had a wedding coming up in 12 months time, for example, you could make a list of all that needs to be done, smaller chunks of work. Then set a goal of getting some of these done in a day, or a week, or a month.

It’s like a psychology trick. If we focus ourselves this way, we believe achieving the big task will be easier and then it ends up actually being easier!

Let’s get back to the idea of our New Year’s resolution. If you’ve missed the January window. So what? Why not set a “New Week”, a “New Month” or just a “New Day” resolution?

Imagine, if you did that today. Using the examples above, just doing it for each day, week or month at a time, by summertime you could have more than half the work done and dusted for that wedding. You could have €300 in your piggy bank, you could have gone to the gym 48 times, or walked 60 miles!!! You will be noticing the benefits and thinking how easy it was!

Think of anything that you have been putting off doing. Break it down into smaller chunks. Make one chunk your goal, one at a time and before you know it that big task you have been dreading will be done.