Last Updated on May 2, 2022 by Chin Yi Xuan

Hey friends,

One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do since starting my blog 2 years ago is to give it a visual and backend upgrade.

To me, just like how we’d present ourselves when meeting people in real life, my blog is a direct representation of my identity online.

Being a total stranger to web design, revamping my blog is truly the biggest project waiting for me to tick off in my to-do list.

Guess what? 

I have been slacking on this project since the start of 2019, until things really take off this month (finally!).

In the month of August alone, I’ve managed to revamp my blog in progress that I’d love it to be. Currently, I’d say I am around 60% done from the ideal state of my blog (check out my homepage, About Me, and Useful Tools section!)

How did that happen?

What pushed me to finally make progress to my long-overdue blog revamp?

Here’s the trick that I used:

I call it the Slow Burn approach.

Essentially, the Slow Burn approach is where I spilt up a giant goal (eg. Blog revamp) into a clear workflow with multiple small tasks, over a long period of time.

In human words, it means instead of trying to achieve a huge goal in a day or two, we break down that goal into smaller tasks where we work on little chunks over, say, a month.

In the Slow Burn approach, we focus on the consistency of small effort (a.k.a. Slow Burn) instead of the intensity of a few huge blows (a.k.a. Burnout).

The reason is particularly simple: because it is way (wayyy) easier to get things rolling.

Before this, I recalled myself being intimidated by the whole website redesign project and got so disappointed in myself for not making any progress in one of those days.

Using the Slow Burn approach, I list down my workflow and break them down into small chunks of simple tasks (eg. looking for reference/inspiration, which WordPress plugins to use) – now the whole project suddenly becomes reasonably actionable! 

I really like this approach especially when it involves huge, intimidating goals because it helps me see those goals in a much simple manner.

If you are facing similar hurdles like myself, be it to start a business, Youtube channel, blog, or learning a new skill, I highly recommend using the Slow Burn approach.

Hopefully this helps and wishing you an awesome week ahead – Selamat Hari Merdeka!

Yi Xuan