In the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed. For a thing to remain undone nothing more is needed than to think it done... patient industry overcomes impossibilities. Great undertakings are not to be brooded over, lest their difficulty when seen causes despair.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Two opposite errors sink tasks, and this maxim corrects both with one posture. The easy task is lost to overconfidence: treated as already done, it gets the careless effort that turns simple into failed. The hard task is lost to dread: brooded over until its size produces despair and nothing is attempted at all. The fix is to invert your attitude to each. Approach the easy with the seriousness you would give something difficult, so confidence stays awake. Approach the difficult as if it were easy, not by underestimating it but by refusing to be paralysed, breaking it into steps and starting, because patient industry overcomes what brooding only magnifies. Attention on the small, boldness on the large.
Practice
- Give routine tasks a real check; the errors that embarrass most are on the things you were sure were too simple to get wrong.
- Attack a daunting task by starting, not by studying its size; break it down and begin, since brooding only magnifies it (maxim 167 supplies the bold heart).
- Match the attitude to the trap: seriousness where you would be careless, calm where you would panic.
Use this when
- Use this on the routine work that is beneath your attention; that is exactly where a sleeping confidence produces the avoidable slip.
- Use it on the intimidating project that you keep not starting; treat it as easy enough to begin, and momentum does the rest.
Ignore this when
- Don't treat the difficult as literally easy; the posture prevents paralysis, it does not excuse under-preparing (maxim 78 still scouts the depth).
- Don't over-ceremonialise the trivial; the small task gets real attention, not disproportionate anxiety.
A picture of it
The rare serious error of a veteran accountant comes not on a complex audit but on a routine filing he had done a thousand times, waved through on autopilot with his confidence asleep. Chastened, he nearly makes the opposite mistake on the next genuinely hard reconciliation, brooding on its size until dread almost freezes him out of starting at all. Then he inverts his own lesson: treat the hard thing as small enough to just begin. He starts the first account, then the next, and patient work carries him through what brooding had magnified. Two opposite traps, one man, one cure: seriousness where he was careless, a first step where he was daunted.
Wake your confidence on the easy, steady it on the hard. Both tasks fail from the wrong attitude, not the wrong ability.