Overwhelm: Break Down Big Tasks

Overwhelm.

Break down big tasks.

It's really easy to feel overwhelmed by all these big things that we need to do,

Right?

Like the easy stuff,

Right?

One or two steps,

Bing,

Bing,

Done,

Right?

Those are great,

Right?

Those feel good to just sort of check off the list and move on.

But life has plenty of things that are not like,

You know,

A five-minute job.

And it's easy to feel just sort of flooded by it and not sure where to begin or not sure that you're up for it or whatever.

So let's talk about how to deal with that because it's definitely,

Situation that comes up You know.

When we feel overwhelmed by something,

By a task that we need to do,

Sometimes it's because it just feels like too big,

Right?

Like it feels like we can't sort of wrap our whole brain around it.

And,

You know,

That might be kind of a working memory thing,

Right?

It's hard to hold everything on deck all at the same time.

Or it might be that,

You know,

The problem we're trying to solve,

It's kind of too vague,

Right?

We don't have a clear sense of what it is that we're doing you know,

How it needs to be done or with what or with who or when or something,

Right?

And it's just like this fog and that feels overwhelming.

Maybe it's just kind of confusing,

Right?

Where we know what needs to be done,

But just like it doesn't make sense or there's these contradictions or something.

Maybe it's just really complicated and it's hard to like sort it all out and figure out how to put it together.

Maybe it's just frustrating,

Right?

Where we know what to do,

But it's just like,

It's just not working or something.

So these are the situations then where we feel cognitively overloaded,

Right?

Because it's hard to sort of intellectually like wrap our brain around it,

Which then leads us to feel sort of emotionally overwhelmed,

Right?

That we get sort of flooded and there's this feeling of like,

Just get me out of here.

I don't want to deal with this too much,

Too hard.

Like there's got to be something else I can do instead.

So first things first,

Take a few deep breaths.

Right.

To sort of calm down that emotional reaction or go for a walk.

Call a friend,

I don't know,

Do some pushups,

Something to just like bring down that emotional response.

And then begin to invest.

Well,

First,

Accept the fact that it's going to be hard and you're going to have to deal with it.

Then,

You know,

Just invest the cognitive effort to start kind of breaking it down and to start kind of wrapping your brain around it and to figure it out and to put some order and some sense on it.

And maybe.

Maybe we just got to commit to five minutes,

Right?

Like doing the whole thing feels like too big,

But like five minutes,

Fine,

I can do it.

So I'm going to do five minutes and then I'm going to see how I feel.

And the sort of trick here is usually once we do five minutes,

It's not that big a deal to do another five minutes,

Right?

It's the first minute that's the hardest.

Once we're started,

Hopefully we get a little momentum and then we're kind of rolling and we're like,

Okay,

Well,

I know the next thing I can do.

Yep okay and i know now i know the next okay now i know the next right and we just hopefully keep kind of chugging our way through it Sometimes we just got to start by starting.

And that's kind of dumb and obvious to say,

But like that's the sort of simple truth of it.

And maybe the first thing to do is that we need to take some time to clarify,

You know,

What are the expectations for how this is going to be done or what it's going to look like at the end?

Are there certain requirements or constraints or anything else that we need to do here?

Particularly if this is something that's coming from somebody else.

If it's something that we're doing for ourself i don't know maybe you got to pull somebody else in right ask for a bit of input ask for a bit of advice you know what recommendations like hey here's my thing what do you think what would you what would you do here um You know,

Sometimes I kind of see this a lot with clients that they get overwhelmed and stuck.

And,

You know,

Sometimes the place to start is just anywhere.

Just pick a thing,

Pick a place and just start doing it.

And the reason why they they're stuck is they're trying to figure out the place to start.

But there's no the right.

There's lots of places you could start.

So just pick anything and just get started.

And you're a little bit closer to being done.

If there is genuinely like a first step that matters and makes sense,

Then that's the thing,

Right?

You need to actually invest the time and energy to figure that out.

Sometimes you just sort of got to have faith in the process,

Meaning I'm just going to start working on this and I have faith that like I'll figure it out.

Like this will make itself known.

I'll sort of hit some dead ends.

I'll have some false starts.

I'll do some things that like actually not so good,

Not helpful.

But that's cool because I now I know the situation a little bit better.

Like now I know this isn't the way.

So what what else might be?

Right.

Feel like you have to have it all sorted out in your head before you start it may not be possible you might need to actually do some things and try some things and get some feedback to then actually know what the next and the next and the next steps are Sometimes you got to start at the end,

Meaning what's the desired endpoint?

Where is this supposed to get to?

What purpose does this serve?

How does this fit into some sort of bigger picture,

Right?

So like,

Why am I doing this?

That might be worth kind of really kind of clarifying.

And if that's kind of vague or squishy.

That that's going to make it hard to know what to do or how to approach this.

What problem does this solve or what purpose does it serve?

Why does this matter?

Why does this matter to me?

Why does this matter to other people?

And maybe what's the problem if I don't do it,

Right?

That can help you decide,

Maybe what it helps you decide is I'm not doing it.

But also,

If you know what the problem is for not doing it,

That might also kind of clarify why you are doing it and therefore what's the end point?

And how to get there.

But you just got to invest that time,

Right,

To sort of accept that you're going to have to invest the time to figure this out.

And that may be the first step in the process is to just figure it out and break it down into the steps or phases or whatever.

Right.

Maybe that's the place where this big project begins.

Sometimes if a job is too big and it's too complicated and it's too confusing,

Sometimes we just need to begin to make some choices,

Right?

We need to kind of like narrow the field,

So to speak.

And I think a great example of this is I needed to buy a new laptop.

And if you look at laptops,

There's like.

8 million different versions out there,

Which are slightly different from each other with technical specs that I don't understand.

And honestly,

I don't care.

I do not care about different manufacturers of graphics cards.

It does not matter to me.

I will never notice the difference of functions.

So when I was picking a laptop,

I just started with my most important things and I sort of whittled my way down.

Need what operating systems how much ram right i just started kind of whittling down did i eliminate some computers that could have been good yeah but like at some point you just got to start making choices and at the end it was good enough right so um So if you're sort of overwhelmed by it,

Start to sort of cut things down a little bit so you can actually like wrap your brain around it.

Maybe if there's too much to sort of hold in mind at once,

Start writing it down,

Right?

Don't try to hold it all in your head.

It could be writing stuff down on a piece of paper to remind yourself of what it is you're looking for.

It could be copying and pasting stuff.

It could be like on a whiteboard.

It could be,

I don't know,

Honestly,

Like I've done this like with PowerPoint slides where I'll sort of write slides and then I move them around on the screen.

There's other things like Trello or whatever.

There's other ways to do it.

You could do the old fashioned three by five card,

Right?

Some sort of a way that you can physically move items around so you don't have to hold it all up in your head.

And also this way it's all visible so you're not having to remember like oh yeah that's on the other side of the page let's say unless it's too much and if you're like you know what i only need to think about this like hide these things i don't need this right now so let's put those away that just sort of overwhelms and distracts me So let's put this to work.

Like,

Let's really kind of think about how to do this in your life.

Think about a project,

Hopefully a recent one,

That started out kind of overwhelming,

Where at first you're like,

Oh,

God,

This is too much.

But then somehow you figured it out,

Right?

You got from A to Z.

Somehow you got it done.

What lessons learned there can you remind yourself of the next time you hit some project that feels overwhelming,

Right?

What are the things that you can sort of like burn into your memory a little bit to sort of pull forward?

To write them down so you don't have to remember them.

Number two,

Identify a current large project that feels kind of overwhelming.

How can you break it up into more manageable parts,

Right?

Based on some of the stuff we just talked about,

How do you sort of whittle that down so it doesn't feel like too big,

Too big?

And then finally,

Identify some ways to sort of externalize information for some upcoming large project,

Right?

So you don't,

Again,

Don't have to hold it all in your head,

But you can sort of put it out here,

Which makes it easier to see it and to move it and remember it and to think about it.

So let's see what you can do with that.

So really sort of,

You know,

Figure out how you sort of put this to work in your life to make your days and weeks like a little bit better,

A little bit less overwhelming to feel a bit more effective and to feel like you don't have as much kind of you don't have these like big,

Big sort of,

You know,

Axes hanging over your neck.