4 Steps to Break Down an Overwhelming Project

Last updated: July 22, 2026

I remember in the movie The Imitation Game, after Joan Clarke showed up late for the evaluation that involved solving a difficult crossword puzzle, Allen said to Manzies: “This isn’t about crossword puzzles. It’s about how one approaches solving an impossible problem. Do you take the whole thing at once or divide it into small.”

We asked ourselves a similar question awhile back. But it was more of an “impossible mission” rather than an “impossible problem.” We asked ourselves: “So...how should we do this? Do we just jump at it or break it down first?”

The reason big projects stall is rarely the work itself. PMI found that organizations waste nearly 10% of every dollar on poor project performance, and most of that waste starts with a plan too big to act on.

How do you start when a project feels impossible?

It was about a few weeks ago, my friend Neiko, who is a television reporter, and I suddenly had this crazy idea of creating a 90-min film about the beauty of Taiwan - not just of its sceneries, but also its culture, traditions and people.

I watched the long-anticipated Taiwanese documentary Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above with two other friends Iris and Jason. But I fell asleep ⅓ through the film. There were no flow, no plot, no climax for me. The English subtitles were poorly done by the way.

So it got me thinking. Why not create one that has more logic and story to it?

Neiko and I were both excited about it, but feeling lost at the same time. Yes, she works with a camera and I with a pen. Yet, it felt like there was so much to do - coming up with a script, finding the right actors, renting and borrowing the places and equipment, etc., and we had no idea where or how we should start.

With just the script alone, all sorts of ideas came pouring down on us like heavy rains: we want to film the views from the rear of the train, starting with Pingtung, the southernmost point of Taiwan, and ending with Taipei; we want to drop by each major city and town along the way to shoot the local sceneries; we want to talk to Taiwanese aborigines about the now and then - and hopefully get a glimpse into how the Amis people contributed to the chant in the popular international hit “Return to Innocence” - and visit Hakka people living in Hsinchu and Miaoli; we want to include the fireworks on New Year’s Eve at Taipei 101...The list kept going.

Staring at the notes scribbled on the pieces of paper, we wondered: “So what’s next”?

If it were Allen, the same Allen, not the one who created GTD, he probably would’ve just taken the whole 90-minute video and divided it into step-by-step actions in 6 minutes. We aren’t that smart though, so this was what we did: after we thought about it and got all the ideas down, we organized them into categories and broke them down into doable items and further into smaller actions.

Things definitely looked brighter after the whole scary thing was broken down into little pieces. Of course, it would still take time and possibly help from others to complete all the steps and, ultimately, achieve our goal: a 90-minute video with just as much beauty and twist of tales and smiles, but at least the mission looked possible now.

How did we break the project into 4 doable steps?

Looking back, here is the exact sequence that turned an overwhelming film into something we could actually start on. It's essentially a work breakdown structure for a film instead of a book, using the same 4 Ds method underneath:

1. Dump every idea. Get all of it out of your head and onto paper first, no filtering and no judging.
2. Group the ideas into categories. Scenes, locations, people, logistics; each idea finds a bucket.
3. Break each category into doable items. "Film the scenery" becomes "film the view from the rear of the train, Pingtung to Taipei."
4. Break those items into small actions. Each item turns into concrete next steps you can tick off one by one.

In Quire, that structure maps onto real features: a category becomes a parent task with nested subtasks underneath, and if you want each category to have its own visual home in the list, Sections divide and conquer a task list the same way. If you'd rather start from a ready-made structure than build categories from a blank page, a project plan template gives you that same breakdown before you've written a single task.

How do you apply this to your own goals?

Today, be it at work or in life, we meet problems, face goals and have dreams that are not entirely impossible but at least challenging to solve or achieve. Do we confront them all at once? Or do we divide them into pieces and conquer them one by one? It’s a question you should ask yourself.

How do you make an impossible project possible?

The whole method is three moves, and none of them require seeing the finish line from the start.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you approach a goal that feels impossible?

Break it into pieces instead of facing it all at once. The author and her friend took an overwhelming film project and sorted their ideas into categories, then doable items, then smaller actions.

Why does breaking a big project into pieces help?

Once a scary project is split into small pieces, it stops looking impossible and starts looking doable. It still takes time and help, but the path forward gets clear.

What lesson does the post draw from solving hard problems?

It comes down to a choice: tackle a big goal all at once, or divide it into pieces and conquer them one by one. Dividing is what made the film project feel possible.