How to Finally Stop Being So Overwhelmed

You wake with a start as that panicky feeling takes hold. All of the things you need to do today, or That One Big Thing that is happening later overwhelm you into a state of paralysis. You’re not sure what job to do first, so you flail around trying to attack multiple things at once, or worse, do nothing.

Stop Doing That!

It doesn’t matter whether you have ten things to get done today, or a hundred. It doesn’t matter if That One Big Thing is so ginormous you don’t even know where to begin. There is one simple idea that will cut through the clutter and allow you to focus and make progress on your day.

You only have to do one thing next.

That’s it! You only have to do one thing next. The trick is to determine what that one thing is. But first, I have to debunk a myth. Be careful. This next statement will cause strong men to faint and send children screaming into the night.

Multitasking is a Lie!

Sorry, you multitasking whirling dervishes out there. There is no such thing as multitasking. There is simultaneously doing several things half-assed. There is stopping to do this and doing that, then stopping that and coming back to this.

There is no such thing as multitasking, and I can prove it. I used to have a manager who was a chronic multitasker. In meetings, he would always be doing something else while ‘listening’ to you. So, any time I met with him, I would work the word asparagus into the conversation.

He never noticed.

He was doing a half-assed job of working on the computer while doing a half-assed job of listening to me. So when I said, “The third-quarter results are going to be more asparagus than last year,” he didn’t bat an eye. So, no matter how many things you have to do, don’t try the myth of multitasking. Just do the one next thing.

How do you know what to do next? I’m glad you asked. I used to watch cooking shows. There was one, in particular, I always liked that featured a cajun cook. No matter what he was cooking, he always started the same way.

First, you make a roux.

I’ll bet the multitaskers out there didn’t even notice that little segue. But the point is, to take control of the chaos swirling around your brain; first, you make a list.

At the end of each day or first thing in the morning, you make a list of everything you need to do that day. And don’t go crazy. Know your limits. Know that you can’t control time. There are only so many things you can get done. But it’s okay as you begin this new habit if you put down too many things. We’ll get back to that.

Because that’s not the next thing.

The next thing is looking back over that list and identifies anything that is not a task, but a project.

Like That One Big Thing

You need to sit down and break those things into tasks. You will have to decide for yourself what is or is not a task. For me, a task can be done in an hour or less. A task is something that can’t be broken down any further. If you are having a hard time breaking your project down, try this trick.

Make an outline

You know, those things you had to do back in school that start with capital letters, with numbers nested inside of those and small letters nested inside of those, and so on.

Make an outline. Take That One Big Thing and chop it into at least two or three chunks. Build a house may look like this:

• Draft a plan
• Buy supplies
• Build the house

Don’t overthink it, just chop it into pieces. Now for each of those things, cut them into at least two or three things. Build the house becomes:

• Clear the land
• Pour the foundation
• Frame the house

And so on. Keep dissecting the chunks until you can’t break them into at least two things. Now you have a task.

Buy some asparagus

Sorry, I just wanted to see if you were multitasking. It should buy 437 two by fours. Or whatever. It may be a tedious process, but you will get better at it. And each day, you end up with a list of small, manageable tasks.

But what’s next?

Well, that’s for you to decide. There are a lot of methodologies out there to figure this out. The Eisenhower matrix is one. In that, you divide everything into four quadrants:

• Urgent and Important
• Urgent and not important
• Not urgent but important
• Neither urgent nor important

Everything goes into one of those buckets, and that sets the general order. Use the same process to order the things in each quadrant and so on. Now, finally, you know what is next. The first thing on the list is next, and that’s what you do next. You don’t need to worry about what is after that, or what the forty-third thing is, just what’s next. You now only have one thing to do.

Trust me, that is a very liberating feeling.

At the end of the day, you stop. Maybe you only got twelve of your twenty things done, but you can rest easy because you know you got the most urgent and most important things done.

So what do you do with the rest? They go on tomorrow’s list, of course. But the first thing you didn’t do doesn’t necessarily become the first thing tomorrow. Because tomorrow, you go through the whole process over again. Maybe the first thing you didn’t do becomes more urgent.

But perhaps it doesn’t. Those things that are neither urgent or important may never get done. But guess what? Nobody cares. Why? Because they aren’t urgent or important. And after you have done this for a bit, you will know not even to put those things on the list. They go on a different list — things you may do someday.

Now, if you will excuse me, the next thing on my list after writing this article was making out my grocery list.

Asparagus.

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