Stop wasting time, overcome overwhelm, and feel good in your work
“In a simple life in which you only do what’s in front of you, there can be no overwhelm, ever.
That life is yours to create. And it never arrives. It must be created.” - Steve Chandler
Still feeling overwhelmed? Same.
It’s likely that you’re spending too much time focused on the future and all of the things you haven’t done yet to get there. As the cloud of overwhelm casts its shadow, it’s easy to forget where you are and why you started in the first place. The seeds of doubt and shame are planted as we become paralyzed from taking action - the very antidote to overwhelm. But where to start? (Oh, here it comes again…)
Adam Grant shared with Tim Ferriss that we are challenged by attention management rather than time management. We have become too rigid around maintaining and respecting time boundaries that we have lost our ability to create it. As a result,
We waste more time worrying about time wasted.
Sound familiar? Guilty as charged.
After all, as Neil Pasricha reminds us, we only have 1000 minutes in a day.
How are you spending those minutes?
If you’ve made it this far reading, it’s likely that you too are:
Overthinking,
Overstimulated,
and Overwhelmed.
And it’s no surprise as we are constantly faced with making decisions within those 1000 minutes:
Which route to take on our morning commute.
What to eat for breakfast.
Which email to reply to first…
And on and on it goes.
We are faced with so many choices in a day that we are suffering from decision fatigue. There is so much noise surrounding us that we can’t see the forest for the trees. We’re constantly distracted and interrupted and we lose sight of the reason why we started in the first place.
Creating simplicity in our lives could be the remedy we are all seeking.
You may not like what comes next but it’s where simplicity begins and overwhelm starts to die:
Get off your phone. Leave it outside the bedroom. Designate “untouchable” days where you can’t be reached. Lock it in a drawer if you have to.
When we start our day with technology we’re only adding to the mayhem. The overwhelm. The stress, the anxiety. As soon as we pick up the phone or turn on tv, the source of information is outside of us. It clutters your intuition, your judgment, your space for creativity - all requirements for being productive, solving problems, and building relationships. By starting the day with meditation, journaling, or five deep breaths, we step into the world connected to who we are and what we want; this allows us to:
Find focus - the cure to overwhelm.
There is no doubt that as the day progresses you will get caught up in the work, the to-do list, the feelings of overwhelm returning, leaving you in comparison and doubt. Reset and return to yourself by naming three things at the end of the following statements:
I will let go of
I am grateful for
I will focus on
Adopted and adapted from Neil Pasricha who uses this as his 2-minute morning routine, the answers to these prompts can provide you with a bit of mid-day magic: an opportunity to turn it around. In two minutes you can:
Complete the past. Get into the present moment. And move forward with inspired action. In other words, allowing what’s inside of you to inspire you.
If you can move into action you’ve mastered overwhelm.
Sounds simple, but it can be the hardest part.
To take the pressure of, do the doable. If the action you need to take feels like too much, break it into five steps and start with the first one. This brings us back to simplicity; to doing the work that is in front of us. Do the doable. Ask yourself: what can I do in 3 minutes? And do that.
When you get caught in the grips of feeling overwhelmed, it can be overcome.
Make it simple, find focus, and take action.
Kirsten Schmidtke is a professional coach, creator, and lover of lake life. She works with leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs to help them up-level their careers, businesses, and lives. Are you ready to explore what’s possible for you? Contact Kirsten to start the conversation!
