Tips to getting your day underway and making a molehill out of the mountain

Ever sit down to start your day, start thinking about all you need to do, and then start feeling a bit overwhelmed and anxious as you ponder the mountain of things you need to do?  

Maybe at this point you get up, go get coffee, read a few articles on LinkedIn … maybe go back to bed?  Anything to avoid that crushing anxiety.

It happens to all of us. No matter how experienced we might be, no matter what it is we do, we have those days where we feel overwhelmed and we don’t really know where to start. 

Below is a very simple, uncomplicated set of 3 steps that I take when I get to feeling this way and need to make a molehill out of my mountain. 

Make a list

This might seem painfully obvious, but it paves the way for the next couple steps and helps you begin to organize your thoughts. Write it down, type it out, make a sticky note for each one and put them in front of you (I find this works well for me). Do it in a way that works for you. The important thing is the list.

Identify urgency/difficulty of each item

Take that list & reorganize it into an order that works best for you, but the key is to put the simplest/less time consuming things at the top / front & center and the more difficult/time consuming items at the end.

Start. With the simple things.

The goal here? Start clearing the list. It’s amazing how accomplishing the simplest of tasks can lift the burden. Quickly, an 8 item list can become 3 or 4. The sheer satisfaction of striking items off your list (no matter how small) begins to lift the weight and make you feel productive.

This also helps to pave the way to concentrate on the more involved things that take the most time. That sense of accomplishment makes it easier to give the more important things the time they need, free of that “so many other things to do” feeling.

That’s all there is to it.  Simple.  I hope it helps.

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