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

Full speed ahead, but only half-done tasks instead

I am sure you are get­ting lots of things done, but many tasks are also left unfin­ished. This might make you feel as if you are work­ing and work­ing and work­ing, but nev­er get what you need to do done. It is quite a stress­ful state to be in, not to men­tion over­whelm­ing and exhausting.

When this is where you appear to be head­ing, it is a great idea to hide what­ev­er you are not cur­rent­ly work­ing on. You can only ever do one thing at a time any­way, and are there­fore not helped at all by con­stant­ly being remind­ed of all the things you are not doing right now.

Do this

If this sounds just like what you are going through right now, today, then:

1. Out of all the things you could poten­tial­ly be doing, decide what the next right thing to do is. This right task is prob­a­bly the one that is so short you can fin­ish it and tick it off your list quick­ly, but also both urgent and impor­tant in terms of the goals you are respon­si­ble for attain­ing in your role.
2. Hide every­thing else which does not con­cern the task you have select­ed as the most pri­or­i­tized and the one you will give all your atten­tion to.
   • Put away any Pos­tIts or notes with things you have to remember
   • Close any tabs that are open and which are easy to nav­i­gate back to lat­er when you actu­al­ly need them
   • Only fil­ter out the most pri­or­i­tized task in your dig­i­tal to-do list (by tag­ging it with a label, hash­tag, or some­thing else that sin­gles it out)
   • Remove any­thing around you (phys­i­cal­ly or dig­i­tal­ly) that reminds you of some­thing you want to deal with some­time soon
   • Close all open win­dows (dig­i­tal ones, that is) which are not nec­es­sary to do the task you will focus on
3. Enjoy being able to focus more than before, and now get going with get­ting the task done.
4. Move on to the next, most pri­or­i­tized task. Con­tin­ue like this, and you will fin­ish more than you thought you would.

More focused, done faster

If you make a point of hid­ing any­thing not rel­e­vant to the task before you when you have a lit­tle too much on your plate, you will feel calmer and be able to con­cen­trate on one task at a time. You will not get as dis­tract­ed by all the oth­er tasks and things await­ing your atten­tion, and what you have cho­sen to pri­or­i­tize will get done soon­er and with greater ease.

What’s your way?

How do you han­dle hav­ing too much to do and/​or feel­ing over­whelmed by the sheer amount of work that needs to be done? What’s your trick to get­ting things done and remain­ing focused? I’d love to hear from you — feel free to write to me!

(Just like declut­ter­ing, what does your com­put­er desk­top look like? When was the last time you cleaned it up? Read more here about what you gain from hav­ing an almost emp­ty com­put­er desk­top!)