Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed with what you needed to accomplish? Perhaps your work and personal life are in a perfect storm of activity. You may also have a particular task that you know you should do, but you aren’t motivated to do it. A friend of mine has her own business. While she loves what she does, she dislikes looking for clients, making cold calls, or anything related to marketing herself. When there is a part of our job that we are not too keen on, it is pretty easy to feel overwhelmed by it, so we procrastinate or ignore it. Try just doing one thing. Make one phone call or send one email or finish one component of the task. By doing just one thing, you can break a pattern of avoidance, and the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Have you ever thought...
“I hate doing this.”- Find tools that help you accomplish the tasks you don’t enjoy doing. For example, if you don’t like to cold call, schedule 15 or 30 minutes each month and make the calls. By doing tasks regularly, and in smaller chunks, you won’t feel overwhelmed later.
“I don’t know where to start.” – Consider breaking down a project into pieces, so that you can start to see the feasibility of completing the work. You might break it down by what is easy or quick to do and what is harder or will take longer. Then just do one thing to kick start yourself into action.
“I don’t want to deal with this.” – When I am struggling with something I don’t want to deal with, it appears as a big, hairy ball. I don’t want to go near it. Consider what you are really avoiding. Are you avoiding a person? Are you avoiding an emotion? Seeing clearly what is at the heart of the issue will help you find the one thing you can do to start dealing with it.
Next time you feel stuck or overwhelmed, try doing just one thing.
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