How many of us struggle with overwhelm? I struggle with overwhelm on a daily basis and I have to commit a portion of myself to managing it every single day. There are so many things that I WANT to accomplish and so many things that I NEED to get done.

The month of December always adds an additional layer of places to go, people to see, gifts to buy, and friends to call. Based on the wisdom of Tim Ferris, I have been working on few ways to reduce overwhelm + I started implementing them right away!

1.) REDUCE DECISIONS THAT HAVE TO BE MADE

We make thousands of decisions on a daily basis.   These decisions consume an incredible amount of brain power, but the truth is, that there are very few decisions that actually MATTER. By 10:00AM the brain is already exhausted and we’ve accomplished deciding to wear our hair in a pony-tail vs. down.

Remove all decisions that really aren’t important. Consider picking out tomorrow’s outfit tonight. Even if you work from home, select an outfit so that you don’t have to make this decision in the morning. Reserve your brain power for choices that matter more!

Steve Jobs took this to the extreme, by essentially have his uniform of jeans + black mock neck turtleneck. This man knew a thing or two about reserving that brain power!

2.) IDENTIFY 2 CRITICAL TASKS THAT MUST BE ACCOMPLISHED

So much overwhelm is related to all the “to do’s” on our list. When we are unfocused and distracted, it is incredibly easy to “find” other tasks that “must” be completed. In actuality, we know that we are looking for an escape from a task that is less appealing, more difficult, or more time consuming to complete.

Rather that focus on how to grow your “to-do” list, focus on just 2 critical (i.e. tasks that actually matter!) tasks that must be completed by the end of the day. Having two tasks is completely manageable. You’ll actually complete something and you’ll find that a lot of those other tasks on your to do list will simply fall away. They weren’t relevant in the first place and they are stripping you of so much brain energy!

These are my 2 go-to steps for managing overwhelm. Don’t complicate it, just do it!

Live your WHOLE life,

Meg + Shannon