[stakkur]

A beautiful breakdown of this idea is in ' One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way' by Robert Maurer.

What Maurer does, however, is explain the biological reasons this works. When we are stressed/anxious/afraid, the part of the brain called the amygdala activates our "fight or flight" response. So, when we try to take 'big' steps, we activate the amygdala and...give up, run away, avoid. But (extremely) small steps "sneak" past the amygdala without activating the fight or flight response.