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

Put a stop in time

The mes­sage of the say­ing is that you and I are best off tak­ing action on some­thing when the prob­lem is still small instead of only when it is big. At least I have ben­e­fit­ed from hav­ing this in the back of my mind every oth­er day — per­haps you too?

Do this

If you rec­og­nize that it becomes ​“too much”, ​“too many” and ​“too big” in dif­fer­ent parts of your struc­ture, this week, be extra atten­tive to signs that your struc­ture is begin­ning to fail in some point. Where does it begin to flow a bit too much? What does it become too many of? This kind of growth speaks of a flaw in your struc­ture — an area where it does not work as it should.

As soon as you iden­ti­fy the prob­lem, take action. You can for example:

• Deal with the notes you wrote in a rush the day before, before they pile up.
   
• Reply quick­ly when you don’t have much time, instead of mark­ing the email or mes­sage as unread to come back to it lat­er, before the list of unan­swered mes­sages becomes over­whelm­ing.
   
• If you start to have to work over­time more often than usu­al, do some­thing to reduce your work­load before it gets out of con­trol. Give up respon­si­bil­i­ty for the moment or for­ev­er. Del­e­gate tasks that don’t require you to do them imme­di­ate­ly.
   
• If you notice the fre­quen­cy of meet­ings increas­ing, fill up your cal­en­dar with the ​“down­time” you know you need, before you don’t have any reg­u­lar work­ing hours left for your oth­er impor­tant tasks.

Nev­er again

Because, if you stop a trend in your struc­ture that is start­ing to cause trou­ble for you at an ear­ly stage, before it gets too bad, you avoid it becom­ing ​“way too much”. If you have expe­ri­enced the struc­tur­al dam­age get­ting out of hand before, I imag­ine you have also thought ​“nev­er again”. Strike the iron while it’s hot and you’ll avoid it.

What was your trick?

What have you tak­en hold of and slowed down when it comes to your struc­ture before it became too much? How did you dam? Please share with me!

(One way to stay focused when it’s just too much is to hide every­thing else. What you’ve pri­or­i­tized gets done more eas­i­ly — and you’ll fin­ish faster!)