Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had 3 months to write. It was due the next day.

We were out at our family cabin, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by a binder, paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
-Anne Lamott

This reading is also found in JewBelong section:
Bar and Bat Mitzvah