Welcome, spring is here again! It’s been a long, cold, and dark winter. Many of us have felt the strain of winter.
It’s time for a rebirth! The first quarter of the year is almost gone.
Are you on track with your goals?
It’s been one year since I began working from home. With the changes in work styles, projects, and the struggles of work-life balance, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed.
So, I thought I’d touch on this topic and share what’s helped me to stay balanced.
You know that feeling when you have so much going on at work, and then you get home and there are 10 more things to do? It’s overwhelming.
Your head is spinning, but no matter how hard you try to focus on one task, the other thoughts keep coming back in. The worst part is, it seems like nothing gets done!
Every day we come up with a plan of action for what we want to accomplish or what needs to be done – from our personal life plans down to our weekly work schedule.
But why don’t we have an effective action plan for when we’re overwhelmed?
An effective action plan is the foundation of success in any endeavor.
In this article, I’ll share 3 simple, but effective techniques you can follow today to make your action plan for those times when everything feels too much.
How many times today, or this week have you felt overwhelmed with work and thought, “I don’t know where to start?” Or how about when you were too busy to take care of yourself?
Maybe it’s been a few days since you’ve exercised. Perhaps your diet has been less than stellar.
We all feel that way at one point or another, but we can’t let the feeling overwhelm us. We need an effective action plan!
Start with your short-term goals
I’m convinced that planning is the key to success.
And there’s no better way to plan than by defining your short-term goals. Losing focus on your long-term goals can ruin your day-to-day progress.
However, short-term goals allow you to take small steps towards your ultimate goal.
When you set short-term goals for yourself; it’s much easier to achieve them.
Planning how to achieve today’s goals is better than never planning at all!
Imagine how much happier you would be if you knew exactly where you were going on any day?
Imagine hitting “go” on a project today (even if it’s not something you’ve set as a priority) and knowing it was all down to that one successful afternoon.
When you break or re-prioritize your short-term goals into manageable chunks, you eliminate most of those meetings and projects that are holding you back.
So, start breaking down each day into attainable chunks – from morning rituals and evening routines all the way through lunchtime planning – so that everything feels less chaotic.
Try the following tips:
- Divide your day into morning, afternoon, evening. Plan your day the night before.
- Create a list of tasks for each chunk of the day.
- Plan out what you want to accomplish in that time period and set goals for yourself. For example, write 3 small achievable goals for the day.
Use a Timeline – This will help you identify what you can tackle now vs later
A timeline can allow you to target your projects more precisely in terms of time allocation.
It does this by categorizing tasks by their priority and giving you a sense of when you might need to work on them.
For example, if you’re working on a meal plan for tomorrow and you’re struggling to come up with an action item (such as “call the electrician”), then you might find it helpful to create a “priority task list” that breaks down the tasks by how much time they’re likely to take.
Conclusion:
When you feel like there’s too much to do and not enough time, it’s difficult to know where to start.
It’s easy for the day-to-day tasks of life to overwhelm your mind when you don’t have a plan in place.
But once you create an actionable plan, each task is small and manageable—it feels less overwhelming and more achievable than before!
This feeling of accomplishment will motivate you even more so that tomorrow becomes easier as well.
You might actually look forward to tackling some things on your list because they are no longer daunting or scary but exciting challenges with clear steps towards completion.
In order for this process to work effectively though, I recommend breaking down your goals into short-term and long-term ones.
Then set a timeline for how much time you’re willing to spend on each goal at any point in the day or week.
This will help you identify what should be tackled now versus later so that we don’t become paralyzed by our own overwhelm!
What I want you to know is that there’s always time for success! The key isn’t how much time we spend working or committing; it’s in what we do with our time.
Remember, an effective action plan is the difference between being busy and being productive.
To get started today:
- Take a deep breath
- Write a list of your goals both short and long-term
- Divide them into broader categories
- Brainstorm all the tasks you want to accomplish in a day
- Define the time and order of importance for each task so it’s clear how much time each task will take and when it should be completed.
- Create a timeline to keep track of your progress
- Follow your plan!
