What is micro-commitments for big goals?

Example: You want to write a book. You have wanted to write it for three years. You have a concept, an outline, a folder of notes. You have told people about it. But every time you sit down to write, the scale of the project — 60,000 words, dozens of chapters, a coherent argument sustained across hundreds of pages — presses down on you like atmospheric weight. You open the document, stare at the blinking cursor, feel the distance between where you are and where you need to be, and close the laptop. Not because you do not care. Because the commitment as stated — 'write a book' — gives your doer self an impossible instruction. Now you restructure. Your micro-commitment is: 'Write 200 words before my first meeting each morning.' Two hundred words is less than this paragraph. It takes eight to twelve minutes. It requires no inspiration. Within a week you have 1,000 words. Within a month, 4,000 to 6,000. Within a year, a draft. The book did not get easier. The daily unit of commitment got small enough to keep.

This concept is part of Commitment Architecture in the How to Think curriculum.