" 'You see, Momo,' he told her one day, 'it's like this. Sometimes, when
you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is
and feel sure you'll never get it swept.'
He gazed silently into space before continuing. 'And then you start to
hurry,' he went on. 'You work faster and faster, and every time you look up
there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even
harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop -and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.'
He pondered a while. Then he said, 'You must never think of the whole
street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the
next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next.
Nothing else.'
...
There was another long silence. At last he went on, 'And all at once,
before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by
bit. What's more, you aren't out of breath.' He nodded to himself. 'That's
important, too,' he concluded."

Michael Ende. Momo