How To Reduce Overwhelm.
There’s one thing we seem unable to avoid these days, which is the increasing number of things to do. There’s always something that needs doing. Emails and messages that require replies, problems to solve, documents to read and chores to do.
The difficulty we face is there’s not enough time in the day to do all this stuff.
So, what can we do?
Establish your core work.
I’ve written before about getting clear about your core work — the work you are employed to do at a task level and ensuring you have sufficient time allocated for doing that work. If you can fix it in your calendar, that will make things easier. Over time, you will know on a Monday morning you need to do a specific type of task, and that reduces the need to make decisions about what to do next.
Be clear about your outcomes.
The next step is to be clear about the task’s outcome. This is different from simply writing down a task and believing you will just get on and do it on the day you have assigned the task. You won’t, or you won’t, unless you know precisely what the outcome you want is.
Recently, I read a book on the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London. In May 1980, six terrorists overtook the Iranian embassy and held around twenty people hostage for six days.
Within two hours of the siege commencing, the British special forces anti-terrorist squad, The SAS (Special Air Service), was called and brought into London.
On their arrival, they were given their instructions. “To release the hostages should all attempts at a negotiated release fail”.
How they accomplished that was entirely up to the soldiers. With those instructions, the team went to work devising an Immediate Action Plan — how they would achieve their objective if they needed to go in at a moment’s notice.
Once they had the Immediate Action Plan, they developed a Deliberate Assault Plan, which was updated as the police collected more information.
This is the highest form of professionalism. Receive clear instructions and work out a plan for getting the job done.
Note that the instructions were simple and clear. There was no room for doubt about what the objective was — to release the hostages.
We need to similarly adopt clear instructions for all our tasks. For instance, a task that says, “call Peter about project X, “ is unclear. Sure, you know what you need to do: call Peter, but what’s the objective? What precisely do you want to know about Project X? When will you call Peter?
Many of the reasons we feel overwhelmed are because we are unclear about what has to happen to complete a task. This lack of clarity causes our brains to overthink the problem, escalating it and making it appear bigger.
I recently got a request from my accountant for the VAT (Value Added Tax) receipts for January to April. As soon as I read the email, my brain took over. It was telling me this was going to be a huge task. I would need to download the sales for those four months, isolate the sales where VAT was applicable (EU sales), and total the figures.
However, my “Immediate Action Plan” was to collect the data. At least once I had the data downloaded and in a format I could manipulate, I would then know precisely what was involved. That task would take less than five minutes, so I did that immediately.
As I looked through the data, I quickly realised this would be much easier than I initially thought. Because the data was downloaded as a CSV file, I was able to import that into a spreadsheet and use the columns to organise the data, so all the EU countries were together. Then, it simply meant eliminating all non-EU countries and sending the spreadsheet to my accountant. In all, it took less than twenty minutes.
Had I not followed through with my ‘Immediate Action Plan”, I would have procrastinated and not done it. All the while believing this was going to be a huge task.
Stop overestimating what you can do in a day.
Stop trying to do more than is possible in a day. Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a day. Beginning the day with fifty-plus tasks; you’ve failed before you even start. This is where spending ten minutes or so before the day ends to decide what needs to be accomplished the next day is likely to be the most effective use of ten minutes you will ever have.
On a workday, start with your core work. Make sure whatever must be done there is on your list. Then look at your areas of focus, what has to be done there? Finally, add anything else with some degree of importance or urgency and eliminate the rest.
You can save yourself a lot of time here by ensuring your core work and focus areas are set to recur when they need to be done. For instance, every Monday, I have: “write blog post on my list”. When I do my planning the day before, I make sure I have the title ready and set it up in my writing app.
Then, regardless of what happens on a Monday morning, I will always start by writing the blog post. If I can get that done by 10 AM, that’s a big piece of my core work completed right at the start of the week.
Front load your week.
Schedule all those big, scary tasks on your task list for Monday and Tuesday. Most of the people you connect with are walking around in a daze on a Monday morning, wondering what happened to the weekend. Take advantage. While the emails and messages are not pouring in, get on with the more significant tasks for the week. Get them out of the way. This means by Wednesday, you only have smaller, less critical tasks left to do, and you won’t feel as under pressure when the new demands inevitably come in.
Have a plan for the day.
There’s a reason why surgeons and pilots use checklists and plan their work. They are the ultimate professionals and cannot afford to make mistakes. Likewise, you will find the SAS (and SBS — Special Boat Service) will not do anything without a plan — when you run around with loaded weapons, you do not want any accidents to happen.
Having a plan keeps you focused on what’s critical. If you decide you are going to clear all your outstanding emails, then plan it. When will you do it? Where will you do it? And how long will you do it for? Never leave it to chance.
All it takes is ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day to look at your calendar and task manager and decide what you will get done. It does not need overthinking. Just decide your objectives (must-do tasks) and ensure you have sufficient time to complete them.
These five steps do not require much time and can be built into habits quickly.
Know what your priorities are each day.
Be clear about what action needs to take place.
Be realistic about what you can get accomplished each day.
Front load the week with your most demanding tasks.
Before you finish the day, make sure you have a plan for the next day.
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