Do you ever find yourself looking at your to-do list and feeling completely overwhelmed by all the things on it? So much so that you’re paralysed by indecision about where to even begin?

Don’t worry – you’re not alone. A lot of the humans I know and love find themselves with too much to do and not enough time to do it. But an old boss of one of my favourite humans, Dave, once gave him some advice that I know my primary human, Annie, has benefitted from a lot over the years.

• One thing at a time
• Most important thing first
• Close your eyes and take three deep breaths
• Then start
• It doesn’t all have to be done today

This has helped Annie many times – identifying the most important thing on the list (often the thing she’s least looking forward to tackling) and narrowing her focus to just that one thing. That way, she can get on with that, without worrying about anything else on the list, and usually get it done quite quickly.

Then, it’s just a case of identifying the next most important thing on the list and getting on with that.

Usually, so she doesn’t have the sense of the next thing looming in the future, nebulous and menacing, Annie will sit down the night before and pick out the first four or five things she’s going to work on the next day. Then, she’ll put them in order of importance so, when she gets up to start the next day, it’s really clear what her plan is for the first few hours.

Even if you have so many things on your list that you know you’ll never get them all done before more things get added, you can use this method to help reduce your stress about having too much to do. I believe it’s rarely the case that absolutely everything on your list has to be done immediately – and you can only do one thing at a time, regardless.

Plus, the more time you spent worrying about having too much to do, the less time you’ll have to actually get things done.

So, why don’t you try just picking one thing and focusing on that until it’s done, trying not to get distracted or derailed. It’s usually a good idea to get the least appealing thing out of the way first (sometimes called ‘eating the frog’), because otherwise it will be hanging over you all day. Think about how great you’ll feel when you can tick it off the list, once and for all, and that may help motivate you to start.

Don’t forget to let me know how you get on – or if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about in an upcoming blog post!

 

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