You can't sit down to write a book

Fantastic reminder by Paul Jarvis (one of the founders of fathom) on the Above Board podcast:

“You can’t sit down to write a book”

If your goal is too big, there’s no way to take direct action. Which leads to procrastination. Whenever you are starting work, think about the goal, and then think about what is a concrete step you can do in the time you have that will make it easier to reach the goal.

Most often the answer will be not so grandiose: Plan out next steps. Write a paragraph. Think about ways to improve X. That’s normal. Even great work is at some point simply work.