How the NLP Skill of Chunking Can Help You Get What You Want Although most of us have goals and dreams, why do so few people succeed in achieving what they really want? The problem for many is that, when they set a big objective, they can be put off by the scale of the task. But as the Chinese philosopher Confucius said: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ The problem for many people is that the whole thousand miles seems intimidating but the first step can also seem unsatisfying. So they never get started.

How the NLP Skill of Chunking Can Help You Get What You Want This is true in business as well. Your journey to a hundred customers begins with the first sale and your journey to a million dollars in the bank begins with your first thousand. But most of us begin by looking too far ahead. The secret is to find a way of taking that first step quickly. One of the ways in which we can categorize people according to how they think is through their preferred ‘chunk size’. This reflects whether they like to look at the detail of all the individual steps or just the big picture of the total journey. The problem is that both types of people can have difficulty in reaching their destination. They might lose focus by getting bogged down in the detail or else they never take any action because they don’t identify the steps required.

How the NLP Skill of Chunking Can Help You Get What You Want The NLP process called ‘chunking’ helps both types of people – and the truth is most of us have elements of one or the other. The secret of taking action is making the steps small enough to be manageable and large enough to be satisfying. Fortunately the process is quite simple when you have a system to follow and it is useful in a wide range of situations from time management to writing a presentation.

How the NLP Skill of Chunking Can Help You Get What You Want We can use the concept of chunking in two ways. We can: Become more specific and get more detail. Become more general and get a bigger picture.

How the NLP Skill of Chunking Can Help You Get What You Want Using chunking to become more specific If we are talking about cars, for example, we can become more specific by talking about makes of car such as Proton or Perodua. We can then become more specific still by going down to brands or models from each manufacturer. The secret of making this work is asking the right questions. In the car situation, we might ask ‘what are some examples of this?’

How the NLP Skill of Chunking Can Help You Get What You Want This can be represented visually, for example, using a mind-mapping approach where each idea is broken down into further segments. If you are developing an action plan, you might ask ‘what specifically do I need to do to achieve this?’ Or in writing a presentation, you might ask ‘What information supports this point?’ Although this seems very simple, it is extremely useful in a wide range of situations.

How the NLP Skill of Chunking Can Help You Get What You Want Using chunking to become more general Chunking also helps us to become more general – in the cars example, we would move towards other types of road transport and then other types of transport and finally up to something very general like ‘movement’. Again the secret is in the questions you ask. In this example, it would have been: ‘What is this an example of?’ or ‘What is the purpose of this?’ One way in which chunking to become more general is useful is where you have a large to-do list and you want to organize it into categories or chunks that can be combined. For each task on your list, you would ask ‘what does this task achieve?’ or ‘which category does it fall into?’ Chunking can therefore help you take the steps you need to get what you want.

The Creativity Matrix: Chunking Up, Sideways & Laterally This uses elements of matching and mis-matching as well as big picture and detail to produce lots of ideas and content to bring out a full range of creative flexibility you may not have thought you had. What you do with the resulting content is up to you but it’s likely that inspiration for the following elements of your book can all be covered… The big idea, benefits or promise A title and subtitle The main chapter headings Your target audience Words for the blurb

The Creativity Matrix: Chunking Up, Sideways & Laterally There are three main ways we sort data in our minds. They are: Chunking Up (where you’ll get all the benefits and reasons why) Chunking Down (where you’ll get all the detail) Chunking Laterally (where you’ll often find the weirdest stuff and metaphors) This is useful to know because, what most people describe as creativity is really a form of chunking up and chunking laterally – and when you’re not feeling creative it’s almost always because the details are bogging you down.

The Creativity Matrix: Chunking Up, Sideways & Laterally THEME… WORD…. IDEA….. POSITIVENEGATIVE UPUP LATERALLATERAL DOWNDOWN …MEANS… ….LEADS TO….. ….GIVES YOU….. … IS LIKE … … IS SIMILAR TO … … … IS AN EXAMPLE OF … … IS … …INVOLVES … …IS MADE UP OF… … IS NOT LIKE … … IS NOT SIMILAR TO … … … IS NOT AN EXAMPLE OF … …DOES NOT MEANS… …. DOES NOT LEADS TO….. …. DOES NOT GIVES YOU….. … IS NOT … … DOES NOT INVOLVES … …IS NOT MADE UP OF… - +

The Creativity Matrix: Chunking Up, Sideways & Laterally Being An Author POSITIVENEGATIVE UPUP LATERALLATERAL DOWNDOWN Passive income, Fame and Fortune. A way to make money. A way to contribute. People will think you are smarter. Fulfilment of a dream. A lasting legacy. Running a business Being a movie or pop star (do it once – get paid many times) Investing (you do it up front) Gambling (if you do it wrong) 1: many buisiness model Deadlines Writing winning books. Getting Publish, Self-publishing Promotion and publicity. Tought leadership. Selling loads of books. Building passive income. Dealing with bookshops. Hard Work. Action Selling time for a living. Working a regular job Typical 9-5 job / business. Winning the lottery 1:1 business model. You don’t have to do marketing. Instant Riches You stop working once the book is written. A predictictable income (at first). You really are any smarter. You got lucky. Sitting back and watching the Royalties roll in without effort. Just go to launch parties. Leaving the promotion to your publisher. Signing autographs. Hoping - +