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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

If you had what you’re miss­ing, you could give it to yourself

Where do you start when there’s so much you want to refine? And it does take some time as well. You don’t have any extra time as it is today — and it’s more time that struc­ture would give you. Does­n’t it sound like a catch-22, right?

Do you rec­og­nize this sit­u­a­tion? Do you even expe­ri­ence this right now?

Let me sug­gest three steps to start with. They’re not com­pre­hen­sive, but they’re a good start to build on if you feel like you have too much even to begin.

Do this

1. Get an overview of every­thing. There is too much buzzing around now. You need to see clear­ly what it is to get a grip on it and be able to do some­thing about it. Cre­ate a men­tal ​“map” on a blank sheet (on paper or in an app) of every­thing you have going on to see it more clear­ly than just hav­ing it in your head or an end­less, detailed list. Or, if it suits you bet­ter, list what’s buzzing in gen­er­al. What spin­ning plates on sticks are you keep­ing up in a bal­anc­ing act cir­cus rou­tine? If you get every­thing down so that you can see it in front of you, you’ll have more con­trol over it. Maybe there’s less on paper than it feels like in your head?
    
2. Sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff. Find nuances in the ​“every­thing” you wrote down and made more vis­i­ble. Not every­thing is equal­ly impor­tant. Some things are more crit­i­cal than oth­ers. Some are absolute musts, while oth­ers are ​“just” musts. Mark the most impor­tant ones so that they stand out from the whole.
    
3. Give your­self some breath­ing room. If your life is over­crowd­ed, you need to cre­ate some space. Free your­self from at least one of the less crit­i­cal musts.

• Re-eval­u­ate and decide to for­get it and not do it com­plete­ly. You did­n’t have the space for it. You made a wrong esti­ma­tion of what you would have time for. It hap­pens.
   
• If that’s impos­si­ble, ask some­one else for help and have them do it instead of you. Ask a col­league or hire some­one from out­side.
   
• If the less impor­tant thing is still your respon­si­bil­i­ty and needs to be done, decide not to do it now but lat­er. Give your­self a def­i­nite break — a break you can get away with, for your­self and oth­ers. Until then, be restric­tive with say­ing yes to oth­er things, and instead, keep some space so that you don’t fill the break with some­thing new and end up with too much again.

Use the space you’ve cre­at­ed (or some of it) to try out your struc­ture idea. Invest some time that will give you bet­ter struc­ture — not just now, but pri­mar­i­ly in the future.

Some com­mon struc­ture ideas to try out are, for example:

• to gath­er all to-do tasks into one list in one tool
   
• to start man­ag­ing emails in a more struc­tured way so that the inbox gets emp­ty now and then
   
• to set aside time for impor­tant tasks reg­u­lar­ly in the cal­en­dar, for exam­ple, by play­ing a slid­ing puz­zle game with your own time

The struc­tur­ing will happen

If you — even though you don’t feel like you have time — start with get­ting an overview, cat­e­go­riz­ing pri­or­i­ties among what you have to do, and giv­ing your­self more time, struc­tur­ing will sud­den­ly become pos­si­ble. You’ll reap the ben­e­fits of the refined struc­ture much ear­li­er than if you were to wait for the free space to struc­ture to reveal itself sud­den­ly. It’s worth a lot.

What do you do?

What struc­ture idea do you want to try out when you’ve cre­at­ed some space? Write to me and tell me. Not only is it inter­est­ing for me to hear, but I might also be able to give you an extra tip that will give you a boost forward.

(A tip when you’re get­ting start­ed with build­ing your sys­tem is to also write a CV of mis­takes!)