What to do when you don’t know what to do
A 5-step plan for when you’re feeling overwhelmed and stuck.
Modern life has its challenges. For one, the pace of technology and over-connectivity pushes us to work harder and faster. Culture tends to glorify “busy” as a badge of success, but in truth, overwork depletes our efforts and leaves us feeling overwhelmed.
Even the most successful leaders become overwhelmed. It’s normal. But what you do when you feel that way matters.
Burying our feelings won’t help. Throwing ourselves into more work to “push through” won’t help either. The secret to ending overwhelm is in fact — to do less, not more.
There are natural rhythms in everything we do. And sometimes those rhythms get disrupted by work, stress and situations outside our sphere of control.
Whenever you encounter the feeling of being overwhelmed, or you simply feel stuck, here are 5 practical steps to help:
I plan my day and week using Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner
Write it down.
Do a brain dump on paper.
Why? Because everything is always bigger in your head. When you get your thoughts down on paper, you realise what was worrying you isn’t as ‘big’ as you thought it was. But as long as it stays in your head, it will always feel heavier than it often is.
Write it down, and let a trusted person speak to it. I’ve found this to be a game changer.
Personally I prefer to do this on paper, because technology tends to contribute to our overwhelm. One minute you’re typing away, the next minute, you’re seeing alerts for email, slack and trello.
Take the smallest next step.
When facing a big task ahead, half the battle is getting started. Taking that first step.
Overthinking isn’t the solution. It’s often why we procrastinate. Our brain is trying to figure it all out before we even start. What we need is need momentum, which requires action.
The way to build momentum is to simply take the next smallest step - whatever that may be.
If it’s writing a book: you might create a Google doc and write the contents page. If it’s hiring a new team member: draft a description of the role and send it to a someone to review and get feedback. If it’s running a marathon: start a scheduled morning routine for stretching, walking and running.
Break your big task into small steps, so that it’s easier to get started and build momentum.
Identify your sinkholes.
What activities are causing you the most frustration? These are your sinkholes.
You know them… It’s those things that take you an hour to do (grumbling), that someone else could probably do 10x better than you, and with a smile.
Some common sinkholes I see talking to business owners include: managing calendar, tax and accounting, marketing, HR and compliance.
If you spend most of your time doing these things, it will stifle your creativity and energy — both of which are finite resources.
Effective leaders know how their strengths as well as their weaknesses, and allocate time accordingly.
Once you’ve identified your sinkholes, you can take steps to reduce the time you spend by either:
Automating
Delegating
Consolidating (eg. batching), or
Eliminating them
Leverage your high-impact activities.
On the flip-side are your high-impact activities. These are the things you are uniquely qualified to do, and love doing.
True productivity is doing the right things, not more things. We need to do fewer things that have little impact, in order to free up our time and energy to do the things that have the most impact.
We don’t have unlimited emotional and physical capacity. That’s why we need to get clarity on where we can best leverage our limited time on earth.
What are our impact activities? What the the things you are uniquely qualified to deliver as a leader? Everything else, let it go.
Schedule your priorities
Managing your time is self-leadership. I say your time, because we all get the same 168 hours in a week. You, me and Oprah Winfrey. The question is, how are we spending them?
It’s easy to drift through life without even knowing. Our calendars get filled up by work, school and social events. One week turns into a month, which turns into a year. And we start to wonder - where did all the time go?
We have to take control. Michael Hyatt, one of my favourite authors, showed me how… Create an Ideal Week.
Designing an Ideal Week template helps you visually block out time for your priorities, before everything else fills the calendar.
Here are some examples of priorities I’ve scheduled into my Ideal Week:
Morning routine (coffee, journalling, prayer)
Evening walk at sunset
Date night with wife
Business development day
Family time
No-work weekends
Your calendar won’t always look like your Ideal week, but it will help you plan and move towards it. Scheduling in your priorities first, using the Ideal Week Template will help ensure you achieve the things that matter most, and ultimately, live a more fulfilling and intentional life.
My wife and I recently visited our favourite vineyards in Tasmania.
Rest and rejuvenate
Rest is active leadership. Without adequate rest, we run the high risk of mental and physical burnout. It’s not a matter of IF, but when.
At the start of the year, my wife and I booked a trip to Tasmania to visit some beloved friends and indulge in some local wine and food. We put off for years, and it finally dawned on us - if we don’t book it in, it’l never happen!
We booked the trip for June, to give us a mid-year break. In the same manner, we now book Easter and Spring mini-vacations to the beach.
Life gets busy, and so we need to schedule rest.
Get a good nights sleep, take a long weekend and schedule in vacations ahead of time. To perform at our best, we need extended periods of time to recharge and rejuvenate.
A rested life sets us up for sustainable success.
Recommended Reading:
If you’re looking for some further reading on this topic, we recommend reading Michael Hyatt’s book Free To Focus and Greg McKeown’s new book Effortless.
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