I’ve been working with a wonderful lady who first called me saying that she was just plain overwhelmed.
Through my careful questioning to determine what was causing her overwhelm, she explained that there is a lot she needs to take care of before heading into surgery, and she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
She did not say she was disorganized. She did not say she had more to do than she had time to do it.
She did not even say that she considers herself a procrastinator, which is often a label that my clients use for themselves.
In fact, she is retired and is not under any pressure to bring home the bacon each month. She simply said she had a lot to do and didn’t want to do it.
I was concerned that I was not the person to help her.
My initial thought was that she was seeking a “body double.” You know, someone to hang out with her while she worked through her tasks. Which is not what I do.
She was referred to me by another client of mine, and claimed to fully understand what I do: create systems of organization, efficiency & effectiveness in office environments.
And she was certain that I was just the person to help her.
Based on her confidence, I agreed to see her. And heading to that first meeting, I was slightly nervous. Was I really about to charge my consulting fee just to handhold and babysit?? I hoped not.
Oh, but how things have a marvelous way of working out! Once we spent a little time together and I discovered what was going on with her, it was obvious we actually were a perfect fit.
After a few hours of extracting information out of this kind woman, she had FOUR full pages of tasks and projects listed down on paper. And many of them were not simple little just-make-one-phone-call-and-you’re-done kind of stuff.
All that overwhelm had been swimming around in her brain! She was fearful of what she might forget, and of some of what she remembered! Ick.
As a result, she had been completely, 100% stuck.
I’d compare it to looking over Santa’s list and saying, “All right, you have 2 weeks to get each kid everything they want, and most of the toys will not be found with a quick trip to Toys R Us. Good luck!”
Do you ever feel like that? Like there’s just SO much to do, you literally don’t know where to start, and don’t have any clarity to help move you forward on any one thing, because it’s just all so overwhelming?
Of course, the easiest thing to do at that point is to go watch Dancing With The Stars. Or reruns of Friends. But that doesn’t get you any closer to a solution. It just makes that icky feeling in your belly grow even stronger. Ugh.
Instead, we did this (see list below). And while everyone’s situation is different, this is basically what I would recommend when you get stuck:
1. Perform a HUGE brain dump – in this case we unloaded every last little thought from her mind. If you’ve never done this, give it a try- it’s incredibly freeing!
2. And just when she thought she got it all out, I would ask, “What else?” And sure enough, she’d sit there a moment reflecting, and remember yet another thing she needs to take care of.
3. Then we organized the big list into a few categories that made sense with her various tasks, including phone calls, legal issues and personal tasks.
4. Determined everything that could be delegated, delayed or deleted from the big, long list.
5. Assigned realistic, bite-sized pieces to be accomplished each day so she could begin chopping away at the list and build some momentum.
6. Set up an encouraging and helpful accountability partner, to ensure she continued moving forward each day.
Though it sounds simple looking at that list, when you’re the one in the midst of overwhelm, it really can create paralysis. It happens to all of us sometimes - even me!
But if you take action on just the first step, you’ll get a little relief. And then follow up with selecting just one thing you can do. Then pick just one more thing you can do, then one more thing, and so on… I’ve seen this approach work well in so many different situations. Once they gain a little momentum, my clients often wonder what had them paralyzed in the first place!
I would love to hear how you’ve moved through a state of overwhelm, and how it turned out!
