How to Organize Your Thoughts When You’re Overwhelmed
Being busy is a good thing. Being overwhelmed is not. At any given point in our lives, we add a lot to our plates hoping to accelerate our goals/life plans, etc. Oftentimes, we bite off more than we can chew (all the food metaphors!) and end up staring blankly at the laptop screen, full of dread. If you, like me are an impatient perfectionist and need everything done *yesterday,* here are some ways to organize your mind if you’re feeling overwhelmed:
1. Eat a live frog first thing in the morning. Mark Twain once said, “eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” In other words, if you procrastinate and delay the most important (and also most daunting) task at hand, it will only become more daunting. As I get older, I’m able to move past the discomfort and “just do it.” if you’re stressed about the deadline looming over your head, chances are you’ll feel better by just tackling that paper/proposal/application head on. The best part is that the rest of the day feels like an absolute breeze in comparison.
2. Take it one day at a time. It’s a cliché because it’s true: only focus on what you can accomplish in a day, and the rest will fall into place. If you’ve got too many balls in the air, focus on how you can translate your goals into discrete daily actions. If you’re looking for a new job, add this to your daily to do list: apply to ten jobs online. If your home could use some TLC, add this action item to your planner: tidy the kitchen and living room for fifteen minutes.
3. Compartmentalize. I think it’s very tempting/easy to confuse priorities when everything is googleable and always at our fingertips; work vs. play get muddled. For this reason, I like to close out of my windows, sign out of my mail, even turn off my Wifi if I’m too tempted to go on internet rabbit holes. I’m working on ignoring the random thought that says, “You HAVE to google top ten best ice cream places in the world NOW!” This can wait.
4. Write it down. Although I wish I had a superhuman memory at all times, my brain can sometimes be a sieve when I’m overwhelmed. What has helped me tremendously is writing down/typing out my action items in the notes app for the following day. I like to write down everything I have to do in the order that makes the most sense (i.e., highest priority items first). This has been a game changer for me, as I used to brain dump a jumble of random tasks in my calendar. Instead, time blocking my activities for the day has been incredibly useful.
5. Visualize the end result. I’m a very visual person, and I think a lot of other people are too. In fact, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text! If you’re completely in over your head, unsure of how you’re going to get from point A to point B, simply visualize yourself already having achieved said goal. It doesn’t matter whether you have a road map in place yet, but what matters is that you’ve created space in your brain for this goal to grow and thrive.