OVERCOMING BEING OVERWHELMED

Let’s face it: life, business, study or your career can get on top of you.

The more you look, the more there is to do. The more there is to do, the more you ponder on where to start. Then after you have chased your tail around and around for a little while, you realise that there is so much to do and so little time to do it. Not only does the feeling of being overwhelmed raise it’s ugly head but so does the feeling of frustration … how did this happen to me again?!

DOES ANYONE ELSE FEEL LIKE THIS FROM TIME TO TIME OR IS IT JUST ME?

Here is how I beat feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. I believe you have to first put things into perspective, and to do that you need to categorise tasks or opportunities and then prioritise what to do now and what to do next. The system I use is just something I created that not only puts everything into perspective, but gets me to base camp so I can focus on getting to the top.

The 3 Categories

Progress

Getting up to date so you don’t feel like everything around you is urgent. So identify what you have to handle now, and what commitments have you made that you need to honour. Promises you have made will haunt you until you have gotten around to delivering.

Proactive

Becoming organised can give you a real sense of being proactive. You are planning in advance, you are ahead of schedule and you have started working on tasks, commitments and opportunities long before they are due. Sometimes this is about clearing out the clutter around you.

Projects

When you are making progress and feel you are being proactive, then you can work on the special projects: those pet tasks that you wanted to have a crack at but there was too much to do elsewhere. Projects that would propel you forward faster, that would give a sense of great achievement.

So list everything down under one of these 3 headings. Then all you need to do is prioritise each item. What needs to be done first or right now to start you creating momentum? Then be disciplined enough to do one thing at a time. Start with one thing and then do the next and the next. Just the task of putting everything into a category will provide you with a feeling of being back in control.