Aug 21, 2018
Feeling Overwhelmed? Do This
The Daily Grind #51
I’ve got to write this post.
I also want to be following my whole marketing strategy which involves engaging on Medium and Twitter.
I also have to write 10 articles for my clients.
There is the fact that I want to be writing a few more articles for my own purposes.
I also have all of those videos that I’ll need to record and prepare for both Facebook and Youtube.
Oh and I also want to get out and enjoy the sunlight and actually exercise.
Workloads can pile up on you if you aren’t careful. It’s days like how I felt yesterday where you didn’t want to do all that much.
But at times where I want to be pushing myself further (without burning myself out), there has to be a line in the sand as to where I cut myself from my work.
Being overwhelmed or overworked seems to be the general consensus in the world today. You need to be working hard and produce great quality work. And yet people consistently push themselves overboard so they can provide for their families.
While the reason that drives us to do these sorts of things is compelling, it’s not the proper way to be living.
The last thing that we want is to go into as one of my friends says “robot mode.”
It fucking sucks.
Instead, it’s important to be mindful of your limits for the day. Sure they change from day to day based on your energy, but it’s important to know when you stop feeling it.
When your focus starts to become more processed, more mindless. That you disregard everything all for the sake of working.
Or perhaps you feel utterly overwhelmed about the work that you need to do.
Regardless, consider these steps below as a way to calm down. To bring yourself back to the present.
Breathe
What I mentioned above are all the tasks that I need to be working on today. There’s a lot of demand for me and how I go about it is that I first take a deep breath.
Breathing will slowly allow me to focus and not think so much about the laundry list of stuff I have to do. This will allow me to do a number of things.
I Do The Tasks That Give Me The Most Motivation First
I start breaking things into chunks of work that I need to do over the day.Thankfully the app that I use to track my to-do list has an option to reveal three tasks or all of them at once. Since I normally have more than 3, this gives me a good cut off point.
I put everything into blocks of three which means my routine work, the stuff that gives me energy, is right at the top.
The reason this is key is that we all levels of motivation. As soon as we wake up, our rest gives us the motivation we need throughout the day. You want to be spending that motivation wisely. After all, motivation is what gets you to do the more difficult stuff.
When you use up all your motivation on the easy menial tasks, you get burnt out. And if you’re in a situation where you are only half way through your list, then it can be tough to get through the other half.
At the same time, doing the harder stuff early will give you motivation energy that you can ride out through the rest of the day. For me, that’s finishing my client work early.
I Put Into Perspective How Much Time It Takes
The last thing I do is that I make a habit of telling myself day in and day out that my work doesn’t take me that long. Sure it is writing and you want it to be good, but this sort of attitude puts more emphasis on writing things out on paper.
This, as any writer can attest to, is the hardest part of writing. The actual writing part. What is a lot easier is editing and looking over the post while formatting it.
As a result, because I keep telling myself the work only takes two to three hours (out of the 16 hours I’m typically awake) these tasks don’t eat up a lot of my time.
By putting that into perspective, it can give you more motivation. For me, it allows me to focus on the task and to just do it. Because the work truly does not take long to complete.
Hustle Smart
The journey that we have is a long one and the last thing we want is to feel utterly overwhelmed and overworked. You need to be pacing yourself and know when your limit is at. This means understanding your motivation levels.
The tactics above can help in boosting that, but it’s still key to know where that is at. After all, if you have no motivation and you work further, the quality of the work will diminish.
So pace yourself. We’re in this for the long-run.
To your growth!
Eric S Burdon
I’ve started to take steps in implementing writing into my writing. Yesterday was the first experiment and so far people are enjoying the hybrid post I put together.
I’m excited to be implementing more of these posts in the future, though I’ll probably reserve these for secondary posts outside of this series.
Regardless, it’s a step in a new direction for me and I’m excited to see where it’ll take me.
Outside of that, business has been same as usual (hence why I didn’t want to include any remarks yesterday), but today I’m feeling particularly motivated to get that list done and get caught up to speed.
Call to action
