I frequently think up more to do than I can possibly accomplish in years. In my early 30s, my body hit crisis point and totally collapsed. I could be up twenty minutes a day. 25 years later I can run a mile. Sure couldn't do that in my 30s. My body got to that state of collaps because I didn't know how to say no and mean it. I was encouraged to pack in as much as I could to every day. To top it off growing up I was given very lousy advice:
When you got too much to do
And you don't know where to start
And you get to feeling blue
And you're quickly losing heart
Don't be a dumb thing
Start Something
This is the worst advice ever.
Now if I got too much to do I evaluate what I need to do by certain criteria:
1. Is it life threatening? Driving while texting is life threatening so I put off doing a text until I can pull off and stop.
2. Is it essential to living? Sleeping and eating must be done sometime during the day or night.
After these two, things get a lot more negotiable. I still remember whining to KavinCoach about how much I had to do. He calmly asked, "Would you like a little cheese to go with that whine?" Wow did that bring me up short. (I also better understood why he always sat across the room from me. I couldn't reach him with a hasty back hand.) I was whining....squeaking and sniveling with no intention of solving anything. His next question stopped the hamster wheel of "How can I possibly get everything done?" In the same calm voice he asked if someone was holding a gun to my head. I spluttered then stopped to think. Who was making me do all this stuff? There I was center stage realizing I was heaping all those coals on myself.
Stop
Breathe
Think.
These come in far more handy than that ridiculous poem. When I get frantic, I often find myself doing useless busy work. I need to just stop.
A deep breath brings oxygen to the brain. If I can relax my shoulders at the same time, I get twice the benefit. (I noticed that my shoulders climb up around my ears when I am feeling overwhelmed, physically relaxing my shoulders goes along way to convincing my brain there is another way to do things.)
Think - Several questions are quite helpful:
Is this my job? Being raised by a narcissistic parent I was often assigned jobs that were not mine...I was not the mother. I developed the bad habit of taking other people's jobs in the name of being helpful and useful. So first I evaluate, is the task mine to do?
Is the job on my list of priorities? I noticed that I can fritter away a lot of time on useless task that make me look busy but totally a waste of time.
If it passes the other two question, is there a better way to do the job? The right tools and efficient procedures can save time and effort.
Save a lot of time to never do many tasks in the first place. This weekend I was feeling overwhelmed. I had several things I wanted to do. Then I realized one of the major things did not need to be done this weekend. I could put it off until the following week. Take out one major activity and what is left is manageable. The beauty of goals is they help me answer these questions.
2 comments:
I always hated that poem. Thanks for explaining why! I like your perspective much better, and it works a whole lot better, too. How often did I do something to be doing, when there were other things more important to be done? Prioritizing is huge. I remember mentioning to someone that I had too much to do and too little time to do it all in. He nodded and agreed, and said, "Maybe it's about learning to prioritize." I agreed but didn't understand it fully until reading your post, tying together the problem with what I was taught and what I knew was healthy.
This is probably the first year of my life in which I haven't felt just totally overwhelmed and constantly swamped against the odds. Realizing where that hypervigilence originated from, raised in a culture of fear and never being good enough, I've finally realized my best IS good enough, whether it pleases the NFOO or not.
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