Firstly, what is overwhelm and when do you know you’re in its grip?
Is it that sense of having more on your plate than you can handle and not knowing where to start?
Is it when you’re caught in the trap of procrastination. There’s so much to do yet you still avoid doing it?
Or maybe it’s when you’re pushing so hard just to keep the wheels turning but are still rolling backwards?
For me it used to show up by becoming withdrawn, isolating myself, working all hours and fretting about the outcomes of 101 things at once? It was exhausting.
I want you to know there is a better way.
Firstly, let’s look at what’s going on inside your head?
Your brain or more specifically your subconscious is trying to help you ward off danger by reminding you of EVERYTHING you haven’t done whilst you’re busy trying to focus and get things done.
Great intent but less than helpful in our modern lives.
A common end result is you fail to produce the volume or quality of work you want to – because you’re distracted by all the other things you dont want or need to be thinking about right now – and so you feel bad about it, you think you have to work harder or you’ll be in trouble with the boss, or wont get that client etc (insert your own disaster scenario here…) and so the subconscious goes into overdrive and works harder too. The more you have to do, the more reminders get popped into your conscious mind by your subconscious ‘helper’ and the more overwhelmed you feel.
It’s a vicious cycle.
There is an answer though…create for yourself a trusted system.
What do you mean a trusted system?
By this I mean, a process and set of strategies that allows you to confidently
- keep track of all the projects you have on the go
- Capture new ideas or tasks as they occur
- Easily find the information, resources, project materials, documents when you need them
- Have clarity on your priorities
- Know what to do and when to be most effective
- Review and update all of the above regularly
Most importantly, it’s not inside your head.
Your brain is great for having ideas, not for holding them.
David Allen (Author of Getting Things Done)
The objective is to clear your head of all the noise by offloading it into your trusted system so you can use your considerable mental power to focus on one thing at a time and be effective and productive.
How, by having a curated collection of habits, tools and techniques that combine to create a whole ecosystem of support you protect yourself from the worst of overwhelm.
Why is a “Trusted” system so important?
It’s simple, when you have a system that you can rely on, your brain can literally calm down.
What its trying to do when you dont trust your system is keep all the important projects and things to do front and centre in your mind. It has no concept of what’s a priority or not, it can’t distinguish the size of effort required to complete a task or project. It just knows you haven’t done it yet and you want to or need to sometime in the future.
Remaining calm and focussed in the moment comes from the confidence in your system to put the right information in front of you at the appropriate time. It comes form being able to deal effectively with the new inputs as they arrive and knowing you have a strategy to deal with them later which means they can be left for now.
When your subconscious can trust things wont get missed it will stop trying to alert you about EVERYTHING all the time.
Sure you’ll still get ‘helpful’ reminders pop into your mind about certain things but again, they’re easier to let go of when you trust they’re logged in the right place to show up when they really need to. The amount of time and energy these distractions take is vastly reduced giving you more time and energy to focus on the priority item you’ve chosen to work on.
OK, I understand the principle, give me more info…
Sure. What we’re looking to create is a closed loop in which all inputs and outputs are accounted for in addition to projects and support materials being managed effectively.
Inputs will include such things as
- Meetings: actions, decisions or information arising
- Conversations
- Ideas and inspiration from your own mind
- External commitments (Family, community, hobbies)
- Emails, messages via any media (there seems to be hundreds now)
Outputs will include such things as
- Creative work
- Reports or analysis to be shared with others
- Calls and meetings to progress projects
- Research
- Emails
Projects: any objective which requires more than two steps to accomplish
- Some central place where you can survey all your commitments and see what’s going on
Support Tools and Materials: The guts of your system.
- The external brain.
- Your supporting habits and behaviours
- Calendar, reminders, scheduled activities, repeated actions
- Checklists, action stacks and standard operating procedures for your repeated actions
Whilst what I’ve described is all very nice in theory, the practical reality is different for everyone. We’re all wired uniquely, we all have different lives and situations to deal with so there’s no “one size fits all” solution out there, no magic bullet that’s going to save us.
What we do have is a buffet of options to choose from. What you need is to select only the items you need to give you a balanced meal. Just enough to fill you up and be effective and not too much that you become bloated and sluggish.
Yes, I’m in, what do I need to do?
Here are the essential components of any trusted system.
A master list of projects
- What is the desired outcome for each (what and by when)
- next actions
To-Do list / process
- Curated list of actions with some categorisation for context (Check out this article on to-do lists)
External Brain
- somewhere to keep all your support material
Input control
- Decisions about how you will deal with commitments and to-do items which come from the various input methods
Output control
- Clarity on what you are doing and when you’re doing it
How can I get those?
To get started on creating your own trusted system, start by asking yourself the following questions
Master List of Projects & Commitments
Where and how do I keep track of all my commitments?
How could I get them all in one place?
When can I commit time to fully completing the list?
To-do list
Take the next action from each of your projects making sure to make it specific enough.
Think SMART action. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound).
Include a verb. Some description of what you will do.
e.g.
- Call X about Y to get decision on Z by Friday DD/MM/YY
- Write X report by Wednesday DD/MM/YY
- Read X to gather info on Y. Capture ideas in place Z by Monday DD/MM/YY
External Brain – filing /saving important info
Use the philosophy of “a place for everything and everything in its place”.
Where will I need something to be when I next need it?
How could I make the material searchable to speed up retrieval when I need it?
Input control
How could I identify the actions required for each type of input and where could I log them so I have one list of actions?
How could I remove the items which dont require action? (Clear the clutter and see what’s left)
Output Control
Take the items from your to-do list and plan on your calendar or schedule when you’ll do them.
Remember, to get a system which works for you will take time and effort but the investment will pay off for the rest of your life. The best personal assistant you have is you!
To learn more about how to create your own trusted system, check out the other articles on this site and if you’d like help getting started or fine tuning your system so you can focus and achieve your biggest goals get in touch and lets talk.
Andrew
Disclaimer: The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. Andrew Marshman disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article.
