The blog

There are numer­ous ways in which to han­dle the moments when we feel over­whelmed with work. 

The prob­lem might be that we scroll up and down the list of e‑mails in our inbox, click spo­rad­i­cal­ly in ran­dom places with­out real­ly decid­ing what to do and then deal with it.

The desk might be crowd­ed with piles and papers, and regard­less where we look, we are remind­ed of what we need to do and think ​“That’s right, I real­ly need to take care of that” and ​“Oh no, is that still there? I need to send that before the end of the day”.

The fact that the meth­ods to set­ting these prob­lems straight are so numer­ous is prob­a­bly due to that it is such a com­mon phe­nom­e­non. So, if this should hap­pen to you, there is no rea­son to feel alone in fac­ing this type of problems.

Choose one out of two methods

When you are so swamped with work that you do not know in which end to begin, and you find your­self in a deci­sion-lim­bo, pro­ceed to use either one of the fol­low­ing two approaches:
Either

• Work for five min­utes with one thing

or

• Choose five things to complete

When you have worked for five min­utes or com­plet­ed the five things you decid­ed you would fin­ish, take a break. Reward your­self accord­ing to your pref­er­ences and enjoy the fact that you have tak­en a step forward.

… and choose again

Repeat this process until you regain your ener­gy and vital­i­ty, and the tasks will prac­ti­cal­ly com­plete them­selves. This way you divide the large quan­ti­ty of papers/​e‑mails/​tasks into man­age­able steps, mak­ing it eas­i­er to get going.

What is your way?

When things around you feel over­whelm­ing and you do not know where to begin, what do you do? Leave a com­ment and share your wisdom.