Ten Thousand Baby Steps

Last week, I added the last songs to my two big Spotify playlists: Euro Dance Heaven (2,520 songs) and Euro Disco Heaven (1,695 songs). I added the first of those songs to my playlists on December 16, 2010. That’s almost four years ago.

Sometimes, people ask me:

“How can I do a big project when I have no time to do it?”

The answer is, of course, you do big projects by cutting them into ten thousand tiny activities, and by squeezing those activities into any suitable time slots that emerge at unexpected moments in your work-life.

How to Create a Giant Playlist

Sorry, but I love euro disco/dance music (with a significant chunk of italo and germano). It’s one of my many weaknesses.

Four years ago, I decided to browse the entire Spotify catalog and collect as much euro disco/dance music as possible into a few playlists. Yes, that’s a big project! But I didn’t set aside a month or two to exclusively immerse myself in the Spotify library. I had books to write, conferences to attend, and workshops to run!

Instead, I did it in ten thousand baby-steps.

I sometimes searched for music while waiting in a phone call. I browsed related artists in Spotify’s catalog when I was traveling. I checked albums and collections in hotel rooms after conferences. And I listened to thousands of songs while writing books and blog posts. The result is more than 4,000 songs! And I did it all in between other stuff.

Get It?

That’s also how you can clean your entire house.

That’s how you can refactor your entire codebase.

That’s how you change processes in the whole company.

With ten thousand baby steps.

Feel free to connect to my Euro Disco Heaven and Euro Dance Heaven playlists! They are full of the cheesiest and sleaziest disco dance songs that Europe has offered in the last three decades. Is some some good stuff still missing? Let me know!