Overwhelm is a business killer.
It happens when your to-do list is too long and you don’t know where to start, so you don’t start at all. Or you start, get stuck and then feel like you’re ‘behind’, which adds even more pressure.
That means you don’t market your business and miss out on amazing opportunities. I know because I work with business owners in overwhelm all the time and I’m going to share with you how I help them.
I want to share 3 things that you can do today to stop feeling overwhelmed, to stop feeling that you are behind in everything that you do and to get you started on your to-do list.
First of all you need to do a brain dump, a brain dump is where you take everything that is in that head of yours and you get it all down on paper whether its personal, business, niggly things, things that have been bothering you, everything because while it is in your head it is just taking up space and you can’t figure out what is urgent, what’s important, what needs to go, you just need to get it somewhere where you can see it and free up some mental bandwidth. So get it all out of your head and on to paper.
Once you have done your brain dump, A) you will feel better and B) you can do something with it.
You can look at everything that is on that piece of paper and think what can I put into my diary for later, what do I need to do but not right now? So you can defer things, you can put them off but schedule them so you don’t forget them.
There are some things that you can do right away, it might be a 2 minute email reply to somebody, or something you just need to get off your desk, just get it out of the way.
If it’s something that you don’t necessarily need to do but it needs doing you can delegate it, again that might mean firing off an email, doing a quick bit of research, finding somebody who can do that transcription for you or sorting out an ironing service or whatever you need doing.
So you need to look at what you can ditch, what is on that paper, that was in your head that can go, it doesn’t need doing, it’s just taking up space.
Number 1 – ditch
Number 2 – look at where you can delegate
Number 3 – look at what you can do now quickly, if there is something that you can’t do now quickly, can you defer it? Can you put it in your diary and schedule it for later?
That can help a lot but the 3rd thing that you can do is take a look at the jobs that you are left with, take a look at the tasks that are still there burning a hole in that piece of paper and my suggestion is that you get rid of any big jobs.
You do that by breaking them down into smaller jobs because you shouldn’t have any huge jobs on your to-do list because they never get done, it’s like trying to eat an elephant, the only way you can do that, if you had a huge chocolate elephant, you wouldn’t’ eat it all in one go, well you might be able to but you would usually tackle it one bite at a time!
I want you to look at the big jobs, whether it’s, I need a new website or I need to get an email newsletter done or I need to organise a trade show stand, they are huge jobs, how can you break them down? Look at how you can break them down into smaller and smaller tasks.
If it is I need to organise a trade show stand, there will be people that you need to call so what phone calls do you need to make? What measurements do you need to take? What lists do you need to get together? What stock do you need to assemble? They are all small jobs, 10-15 minute jobs, so just do what you can to break every big job down into the smallest possible job.
You will end up with a long list but they are really easy tiny things to do and you will feel so good when you can tick them off.
The three things that you can do today are:
1. A brain dump
2. Ditch, delegate, do and defer
3. Break all the big jobs down into 10 minute jobs
The best thing about 10 minute jobs is that you can do them in and around other things, so even if you have got a day full of phone calls or you are in between clients, you can find 10 minutes here and there to make a phone call, do a quick email on your phone. You can do it while you are waiting for the kids to come out of school when you are sitting in the car or at the school gates.
10 minute jobs are the saviour of busy business owners who need to get stuff done.