See how Sebastian managed to eat his elephant. If you're also a prospective elephant eater, this article is for you.
“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it”
Rene Descartes
“Sebastian should be reading quarter of an hour a day” said his teacher across the desk at his school interview.
She was right damn it – how were we going to make this happen?
Returning home with my ex husband and partner in tow I knew it would be my ears ringing that night. So – the next morning I had a conversation with Sebastian.
“Your English teacher suggested you read more at home Bas”
“Whatever” he replied
“How would you feel about reading 15 minutes a day”?
“Fine”
“Shall I get a notebook and we can sign off each lot of 15 minutes once you’ve read it”?
“Sure”
So it began. With a 5 cent notebook we allocated 8 lots of 15 minutes to each page so that when 2 hours reading was completed the page was folded over triumphantly! Sebastian’s goal was to read 20 hours with a graduated reward system kicking in at 5, 10, 15 and 20 hour intervals.
When Sebastian had got to 4.75 hours I asked him how he was going.
“Fine”
“That’s great” I replied swiftly switching to my coaching hat.
“Tell me about it”
“I finished a book last night”
“Wow – that’s fantastic. What did you learn from that?”
‘What do you mean?”
“Well, how do people eat elephants?”
“A little bit at a time” he replied.
Go Sebastian!
“5 cent notebooks may start out as such but they can end up as gold mines!”
Julie Woods
Professional speaker and coach
julie@thatblindwoman.co.nz
www.thatblindwoman.co.nz
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