On Friday I spoke a little about stress and it’s different types.
Eustress and Distress.
And about how you can use meditation to help clear your mind.
Today I’m going to talk about the sheer level of overwhelm many of us feel.
You know – all those things we have to remember and do that aren’t inherently stressful, but fill our mind all the time and make switching off and relaxing very difficult.
It’s something people often report to me when we do the monthly LEAN Map assessments.
I’ve done some already this morning and heard similar stories.
Just “too much” going on to sleep properly and stay stress free.
I’m going to share with you a little tactic I use to help keep all those things out of my mind.
I use a task app on my phone.
Google Tasks it my case.
Search for it in your app store if you want to try it out.
Whenever I think of something that needs to be done, I pop it in my app with a due date and category.
And a reminder for a certain point I might want to do it.
And then make a concerted effort to get it out of my brain and forget about it until my phone reminds me.
As I mentioned in last weeks’ podcast, I then try and batch the tasks in my normal working day.
I’ll look at the online version of the task list at the start of the day – https://mail.google.com/tasks/m.
And decide which I am going to do that day, based on importance and urgency.
Batch them dependent on category and what can be done together.
My task list currently looks like this, with number of things in each category in brackets:
- 28DBT stuff (14)
- Article ideas (36)
- Briefing Meeting (4)
- Christmas (7)
- Email series (3)
- General thoughts (32)
- Internet (12)
- Mailing List (4)
- Marketing (11)
- Misc (24)
- Orders (3)
- Podcast (5)
- Shopping (3)
- Videos (8)
- Website (4)
Now, if I just looked at a list of 170 items I’d probably feel pretty overwhelmed.
And stressed.
But many of them are fairly quick jobs.
Its often the set up time for them that takes time.
Whether it be getting the video camera and microphone setup, logging into our website or email programme, etc.
Or getting into the mindset needed.
The actual jobs themselves can be pretty quick if batched.
Today I’m pretty packed out.
So I’m going to do 3 articles and videos.
But I’ll get them done much quicker than if I do 1 each day and some other stuff.
And I’d be much more stressed because of that.
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Give it a go.
I appreciate not everthing can be batched.
But a lot can.
And you can use such a system to get things out of your head until the point you can actually do something about it.
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I’ve got some more stuff about stress and change for later in the week, but tomorrow, on a more light hearted note, I’m going to tell you about the time I ate a duck.
Yes – a duck.
Those things you see on a pond.
Seriously!!!!!
Much love,
Jon “Not much going on in my head” and Matthew “Even less” Nicholson
P.S. I’m going to write tomorrow’s email now and schedule it #batchingrules
P.P.S. If you enjoy these emails and are on Facebook, we’d really appreciate it if you could spare 30 seconds to pop over to our page – www.facebook.com/myrise.co.uk and give us a rating and / or review – it’s that star thing at the top of the page 🙂
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