The secret to conquering what looks impossible to do
About a year ago I moved to a bigger place — a house with a garage. I was excited! Among other things, now I would have space to organize everything I had put provisorily on the balcony of my apartment.
But instead, with the other daily activities, fixing the garage was becoming a task that grew more difficult by the day. The work seemed impossible to do. I would get overwhelmed just by looking at it! Where could I start?
It took three adults and two kids to do everything and almost one week to finish it — as little or as much as possible each day.
The same problem happened with my writing and content creator work online. Every time I thought about my weekly goals, I would feel overwhelmed. There was so much I wanted to do that I didn’t know where to start. So I would do the next easy thing — a kind of work I didn’t need to think about as much. But that wouldn’t give me any satisfaction or accomplishment!
The problem was I wanted to do everything, but everything was too overwhelming.
I had to change things.
I had too much to do and no mental energy to do it all. Does this sound familiar? If you feel like you don’t know how to start and it’s much easier to run away to escape dealing with the enormous amount of work, you’re definitely overwhelmed.
How to change this state of mind? You can do a few things to take the feeling away and get things done!
1. Prioritize
If you’re feeling overwhelmed because your to-do list is ginormous, you need to prioritize. Take a step back and identify what matters most. Then start with that. This way, you can focus on the task longer and make more visible progress. Working with priorities made a lot of difference from how I did before. The same goals and tasks are now much more doable and less overwhelming.
2. Make a to-do list
Nothing like the feeling you have when you check out a thing from a list! Take the things out of your mind and write them down. You’ll free your mind and will visualize the tasks. But don’t make one huge list that you’ll feel overwhelmed just by looking at it! In my case, I wrote my tasks and goals on a whiteboard in a weekly breakdown, separating daily non-negotiable tasks with variable ones according to my daily schedule. Chunking the list this way made it more manageable and efficient. And less overwhelming.
3. Set Deadlines
I always worked well with deadlines because I tend to procrastinate. Having a deadline when you need to finish something is helpful. It can be a date on the calendar or a time on the stopwatch. Setting deadlines will help you focus on your goal.
4. Delegate
I was never going to do the immense garage work on my own. Even if I was strong enough to move everything by myself, the fact that the work was so big was enough to discourage me — or anyone — from doing it alone. Ask for help, and delegate tasks.
5. Stop Multitasking
You’re not alone if you feel multitasking saves you time by doing three things simultaneously. But it’s just an illusion because, as it turns out, multitasking doesn’t exist. Our brains can’t do that — instead, we jump from one thing to the other, and the quality of our work suffers. Besides, that’s a sure way to feel overwhelmed and not really do anything. Do one thing at a time; you’ll be much more efficient.
4. Delegate
I was never going to do the immense garage work on my own. Even if I was strong enough to move everything by myself, the fact that the work was so big was enough to discourage me — or anyone — from doing it alone. Ask for help, and delegate tasks.
5. Stop Multitasking
You’re not alone if you feel multitasking saves you time by doing three things simultaneously. But it’s just an illusion because, as it turns out, multitasking doesn’t exist. Our brains can’t do that — instead, we jump from one thing to the other, and the quality of our work suffers. Besides, that’s a sure way to feel overwhelmed and not really do anything. Do one thing at a time; you’ll be much more efficient.
All these things combined helped me write this article!
Are you ready to try this out? Which of these tips resonates with you the most?
