Overcome Overwhelm: Decide What to Do

Once I received an email headline that looked like this:

a year to live one bright pearl thanks vera that was beautiful a good credit score is 700 or above  

I feel a shot of panic even now as I attempt to comprehend All That, All At Once.   We can easily be felled by the cascade of stuff from out there interacting with all the stuff in our minds.  We have to decide what to attend to, and when, but this feels nearly impossible when we are in a panic.   What to do?  

Step 1  Stop.  Or don’t start.  Really it’s best to make decisions before you are in the middle of things but if you are already stuck, then get out.  Back up.  Don’t keep spinning the wheels.  Retreat. 

Step 2  What do you want?  Don’t proceed until you can check in with your true desire.  This doesn’t have to be some gigantic life purpose, just an identifiable feeling of joy that emerges when you imagine a goal.  If your todo list is littered with stuff you should do, this will be difficult.

Step 3  Edit.  If you are like me, you have a gazillion ideas, and then you have a gatrillion details on stuff you started, and then you have the normal everyday stuff like eating and cleaning up, and then you have all those ‘shoulds.’   They can’t all be done immediately, or even today.  How much time do you have?  It helps me to use the reminder “not now” quite liberally.   Only some stuff will be done now  The rest of it does not need to go away forever, just fade into the background.   

And now, if you’ve identified a doable chunk of stuff for today’s work period, you can set up your Work Flow.