One of my all-time favorite books is prolific author Anne Lamott‘s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1995). Called “hilarious, helpful, provocative” by the New York Times, it’s filled with great tips for writers that apply to many aspects of life as well.

The concept she describes is a vivid example of the “one step at a time” philosophy. Below is an excerpt from her book’s introduction:

E.L. Doctorow once said that ‘writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard…
…(T)hirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’

Three additional quotes from the book that are pertinent:

I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up.

What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.

Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.

You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.

Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.