Feeling overwhelmed, anxious or stressed about all your tasks at work or home? A simple and surprisingly therapeutic solution is to take a few moments and write everything down. I promise it’ll be worth the 15 minutes.
- Grab a blank sheet of paper or find an empty whiteboard. Write down all the words or phrases on your mind. Write until you exhaust what’s on your mind, until you feel a release of stress and anxiety
- After you get everything written down, you can focus on the underlying problem: lack of prioritization and awareness of deadlines. Now you can create a plan to handle all the tasks instead of being overwhelmed by them!
- Find three different color markers and start circling words or phrases based on whether they are of high, medium or low priority. When you finish prioritizing, put dates on items that have hard deadlines.
When you’re done, go ahead and start working on the high priority tasks with hard deadlines. You probably only have a few, but going in everything felt like a high priority task due yesterday.
p.s. if you are routinely overwhelmed by the volume and urgency of tasks, you may want to take a different approach to your weekly planning.
2 Comments
Hi,
Thanks for the valuable tips…
I am confused how to deal with the tasks or orders coming from everywhere…I receive tasks that need action from emails, phone calls , direct instruction from the boss or customers , outlook tasks…
So shall I gather them all on a piece of paper or on my agenda or on the outlook tasks or what…? What is the best way so I won’t be confused with all incoming tasks from everywhere??
Thanks
Shadi
Shadi@gardencityjo.com
I take forever accomplishing the simplest tasks. When I attempt them, it doesn’t take much to throw me off track. For instance, I may find the energy to mow the yard but when I can’t find any gas in the shed, I lose the energy to finish the job.