There were days where I have to manage a 9-to-5 day job, while Operating a Small Coffeeshop and still have to fulfill my responsibility as a husband and parent when I got back home. During those days I felt both physically and emotionally overwhelmed.
I was overwhelmed and forgot many things like missing some work datelines, paying extra late charges for missing out the due date, had to spend half of my day on the tax office for incorrect payment, etc.
I’m pretty sure you can also be overwhelmed to when you have to deal with health concern, family obligation, running a business.
My productivity dropped those days. My boss even concerned with me being spacing out at work and couldn’t catch up things. Then I started to share how I felt with my friends and colleagues, the following are some notes I managed to take when I had coffee with them.
Let’s begin…
Take Note
I was being told to get those things out of my head and write it down. I’m not talking about writing a Diary or Journal, though it helps and I will share with you on some other time. I’m talking about having a To-Do List to helps you remember them, so it won’t take up much space in your head.
Keep your list handy, install it both on your phone and computer and sync them so you can easily update and check it. I often waking up in the middle of the night with ideas or tasks in my head, I just need to grab my phone and write them down and get back to sleep. I can always look into it the next day and set a specific time to working on it.
Prioritize things on your list and Focus on tasks that required immediate attention or having high impact by doing so. This will help you to have a sense of achievement and boost yourself to accomplish more. More on prioritization below.
Prioritize Things
Almost everyone agree that every leaders must have a Time Management skill. Everyone has the same 24 hours, nothing you can do with that. What you can do is managing what you do with those 24 hours.
By now we know that we have plenty things line up on our notes, the next question would be where do I start? You can group them based on the following from Do-it-now, Delegate, Delay, Drop.
Do-it-now
This for items that are considered as Urgent and Important. Things that you have to do it now or by delaying this would cost more in future. For me this list would mainly consist of my daily routine like bookkeeping, making payment, ensuring service level, etc. If you were saying that you were overwhelmed then you probably found less difficulties to group this list, remember you can’t and shouldn’t do everything yourself.
Delegate
This is for Urgent items that are you know you can do them but you just don’t have the time for or you can do them just quiet but you know someone can do it much better than you. For me they are Tax keeping, procuring, creating promotional content, fixing plumbing, etc.
I delegate them to a freelancer or outsource them. I hired a tax keeper, assign my employee to procure and hired a freelancer designer to design my promotional content. Though I personally enjoy a home improvement work and wanted to fix the plumbing by myself but considering the mess after I decided to call a plumber to fix it. If you think teaching someone else is taking more time than think this way, by teaching someone else you can relief yourself in future for more accomplishment. If you are worried about others doing importance tasks, then you should schedule a follow-up and review progress.
Delay
This is for items that is Important to do but not Urgent. You have to be careful with this list here, because you might tend to forget about it if you don’t examine this periodically. You have to make sure you have a system to remind you to be working on it. For me this list would include Schedule Payment (employee salary, vendor payment, tax payment, etc), banking transaction, reviewing new menu or doing market research. One thing you should remember is that this group is not to keep tasks that you don’t want to do but rather to keep tasks that you want to do on a specific time in the future.
Drop
This is for items that are not necessary but somehow it manage to get into your list. For me they can be those Flyers offer, catalog of ingredients or services which mostly I don’t need. It can be also item that you can’t think of it has any purpose for you now. When I can’t decide whether to drop a certain task, I would put that item on the bottom of list. Then I take my time to gather my thought to say NO to those tasks.
I hope these note can help you to turn you from being overwhelmed to being productive. Share on the comment section below if you have another tips on how to be productive when you are overwhelmed. Or share your stories on how you have overcome overwhelming situation.
Also, with so many things on your task list, remember to take time to taking care yourself and other people also. It might be easy to ignore other people when anxiety is high, but remember that spending time with other people helps you to refresh your mind and come back with a positive energy which will help you to be more productive.
Life can be overwhelming and demanding, just don’t let life caught you with anxiety. Be Proactive in making the right response toward the overwhelming situation and turn to be Productive. Have a Productive Proactive day!
