Hey professionals! You know, when we look at all that we have to do in the world
sometimes it can seem like a mountain to climb, and that can leave us feeling really overwhelmed.
Now I understand that feeling because I've been there myself but there are ways out,
and in this video i want to share a simple action plan that I've done and other people have done
to get themselves out of overwhelm. My name's Steve and I coach professional people just like
you to combine your personal brilliance with unshakeable emotional freedom and a good place
to start is with my free simple five-step guide to mastering stress in the moment.
Now overwhelm is the feeling we get when it seems like there's an overwhelming amount of things
to do and it can come up any time when we're facing a huge project or a major life change,
or sometimes simply when there's just a lot on. And there is one particular way which is how not
to approach it and that is to simply work harder and work faster and work longer. That will burn
you out. What does work? Well let's go! Now number one is to get it out of your head and onto paper
because that feeling of overwhelm comes up because we've got so many things spinning around in our
heads, so many things to remember, so many things we're telling ourselves we must do, and it's all
spinning around up here and that makes our head full, it makes our head busy, it makes our head
crowded, and then we just can't see the wood for the trees! Getting what's spinning around in our
head down and onto paper helps us get it out of our head, it helps us clear space in which we can
see clearly. Number two is to reduce. Once we've got everything that's in our head down on paper
we can look at it and we can decide what really needs doing, what really needs our focus and what
doesn't, or at least what doesn't need our focus right now. Part of the art of overcoming overwhelm
is to cut is to remove things from the list, or at least to remove them from the list for now,
because if we try to pay attention to everything we won't be able to give adequate attention to
anything! And when there's a hundred things to do it's better to do two or three at a time,
and then two or three more, and then two or three more, than to just stay stuck. Number three
is to visualize the work. I don't mean to just write it down, you've done that already,
I mean to lay it out visually. A great method for this comes from the Toyota manufacturing system,
which is a Kanban board. A simple version of a Kanban board simply has three spaces: work that is
on the backlog, to do, work that is in progress, and work which is done. More sophisticated Kanban
boards might have multiple workflow stages. By visualizing the work as to do, in progress,
and done, we can see where our focus needs to be right now, which is on the work in progress,
and we can see where all the rest of the work is in the system. By the way if you're enjoying this
video so far do give it the thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe to the channel and click the
notifications bell so that you'll know when new content arrives. Number four is to split the work
into smaller chunks and to limit the amount of work in progress because smaller chunks of work
flow through the system faster, and by limiting the amount of work in progress at any one time
we can make sure that we're getting stuff done, because if I have to divide my attention between
a hundred jobs it's gonna be a long time before anything is done. When i only have to divide my
attention between three or four jobs those jobs will start getting done and then I can bring more
work into progress from the to-do column, and that helps us build up the rhythm of picking
something to do, doing it, getting it done, to do, doing, getting it done. Now that gets the work out
of our head onto a visual system and enables work to start flowing through the system no matter how
much there is, but we also need to take care of ourselves and the space that we have in our heads,
so number five is to use silence. All too often when we're not focusing on the working progress we
fill our minds with noise, we watch television, we listen to the radio, we go on the internet,
we just crowd our minds with noise again. Silence is a great way to empty the mind so we can create
that capacity to see clearly regularly. Just go into a quiet darkened room and just sit in
the chair with no TV, no radio, no internet, and relax a moment, and enjoy the clarifying power of
silence. And bonus tip number six is to change our relationship with peak performance states.
Now to understand how to do that watch this video up here, or if you've already watched that video
then watch this video down here instead. This is Steve wishing you health and happiness.