Hey,
we've got some friends joining me today. The neighborhood cats
are here. They've never been this friendly before something
about filming new videos for Dreams Around The World they
want to be famous, I guess.
What are you guys doing?
So recently, I shared another video on doubling your
brainpower by eliminating all those nagging things you need to
do that are running in the back of your mind. And in the
process, one of the things you need to do is make a list of all
the things you need to do. And I imagine for at least a few ENFPs
that that led to a feeling of overwhelm, you've thought of all these
things you needed to do, and you looked at that list and just got
totally overwhelmed by it. In fact, getting overwhelmed is not
exactly a rare thing for us ENFPs. This came up in a call I had
with a new Free Freelancer member last week. And she was asking me about this if it's something that I deal with.
And to be honest, I hadn't thought about it in the last
year or so because it hasn't been a problem. But it used to
be a huge problem. I'm talking one to two days a week wasted
feeling overwhelmed at all the things I needed to do, and then
ultimately not properly executing on any one thing, it
probably slowed down my progress on the business side of my life
tremendously. And I'd love to help you avoid the same mistakes
I made by sharing some of the things that helped me move away
from feeling overwhelmed, and actually be able to work through
all the things I need to do one at a time. So if you're an ENFP,
your primary function is called extroverted intuition. And it's
all about information gathering and possibilities, thinking
about all the things that could be that means that loves to
bounce around, you know, all over the place, we get that
right, it also means that you really set up to make yourself
overwhelmed, because your mind is just set up to think about
all these different things. So sometimes you'll think about all
the things you need to do. But you also think about all the
things you could do, making things worse. Some of us I
wouldn't say we become perfectionist, but what happens
is when we get into something, we think of all the ways we
could make it amazing and will sometimes take something that
could be a 20 minute task and make it a three hour task. But
not because we're being slow or lazy or not doing a good job or
whatever. It's because we're doing a great job. I'll give you
an example. Last week, I asked a member of my team to put
together basic templates for us for service agreements. So when
we hire freelancers, or people join the team, there's a simple
agreement with all the same stuff in it. And then I can add
in more details depending on that arrangement. I didn't give
much more instructions beyond that. And the member of my team
came back with something that was more like a legal template,
the what what most companies I'm sure use, but it had a lot of
jargon and stuff in it. And what I could have done is responded
taken 5-10 minutes and say, Hey, we want to do this really simple
and clear use human language, we're not about legalese. When
we work with someone, we want them to feel excited, and for it
to be really clear and simple, etc. I could have done that. But
instead, I spent like two, three hours writing about what our
company mission is, and how when we start working with someone,
they should be excited about it. And we should share what we're
up to and why we do what we do. And I ended up with basically
sending her a book I joked about it after and was that bad? No, I
think what I wrote up will serve as one of the pillars for our
company for many years moving forward. And we'll have these
great documents we can share with new people who start
working with us that hopefully will have them excited and
everything else about the experience. But did I need to do
that? Definitely not. So I took this thing that could have been
done in 20 minutes or 5 minutes even. And I turned it
into something massive. And I know I'm not the only ENFP who
does this. So long story long really that wasn't a short story
is we end up with a lot of things on our plate. And we have
this ability to think about them all at the same time and put
ourselves into overwhelm. It's almost like we were trying to do
it. Like if I said to you, Hey, could you make yourself
extremely overwhelmed and stressed right now. So you curl
up into a ball and do nothing today? How would you do that?
Well, you would probably think about all the things that you
want to do all the things that you have to do all the different
ways you could do all those different things. And then you
think about them all at once and then you'd be curled up in a
ball in the corner. And unfortunately that's often the
formula we follow. It's like we're trying to overwhelm
ourselves. And so we've got to change that. And here are a few
of the things that I've done differently that really, really
helped with that. The first thing is to get things out of
your head and write it down on paper, and to make clear, simple
short lists. So when we're talking about planning a week,
the process I'm using right now, when I do change up my process
from time to time, depending on what I'm working on, I'm using
the tiniest notebook I could buy. And each day I write down
two to five things that I want to get down that day. And that's
what I focus on.
Now, at the end of the day, if I happen to finish early, which
has not happened yet, because as I said, things can sometimes
take longer than we think they need to, then I can think of all
the little things and write those down too, if there's other
little items, but keeping things really simple and planning out
your week. So saying, here are the things I'm going to get done
this week. Anything not on this list, I am not going to get done
this week, and I'm not going to think about or worry about. So
you might want to keep a master list somewhere, you might want
to have your daily and weekly like what you work from, and
then some master lists you keep in your desk or somewhere else
that is all the things you need to do. And then what you can do
is at the start of each week, look at your master list, go
through all the things you want to get done. And then pick the
ones from there that you want to move to your weekly list. And
then from your weekly list, assign each thing to a day. And
there you have it. But Dan, what if it's Tuesday, and I'm working
on my list, but I'm thinking about all the other things I'd
like to be doing. And maybe that there's other things I should be
doing instead of the things that I am doing that I wrote down on
my list? Well, funny, you should ask. That's where tip number two
comes in, create multiple personality disorder for
yourself, this is something I absolutely love to do. So you
create two roles for yourself in your own head. And I'm
completely serious about this. This is how I've done it for
myself, I've made CEO, Dan, and employee Dan, and I don't even
think about this anymore, because it's just sort of become
built in and habitual. But I used to very consciously think
about this, okay, so you have your CEO self, that is the self
that makes big decisions, thinks about strategy thinks about what
needs to get done, then you have your Employee Self, that's the
version of yourself, that just executes whatever you've been
told to do. And I know not all employees do that. But this
employee, you are like a brain dead minion, your job is to just
do what you're told to do. And that's it. And so what you want
to do is, let's say on Sunday, you plan out your next week,
then on Monday, you sit down to work, and you might think to
yourself, Well, I don't know if this is really the right work I
should be doing well guess what, you're a minion, you don't get
to decide what you should be doing. You're the employee, and
you just literally stick to that work and go through it. And if
things come up in your head, and you think, well, maybe we should
be doing this or that or whatever else. Cool. Write that
down on like scrap paper, have a separate notebook, write all
this out on it, not your main planning book, because then
you'll confuse that and you'll have way too many things written
down in it. So yeah, get that out of your head, write it down,
but commit to yourself, during the week, you are going to be
the employee. And you will just do this thing as you decided on
doing one at a time. Now each night, you should plan the day
ahead. I would not suggest going into CEO mode each night and
reevaluate in everything. Do that maybe once a week or once a
month, but try to stick to strategies, because one of the
things that will happen for us ENFPs is that you have the
freedom to change your strategy all the time, when things get
hard maybe, just maybe you're going to change the strategy
instead of going through the difficult work. Maybe you come
up with a really good strategy, but it involves some
uncomfortable situations. Well, when you get to those
situations, maybe I'll say, hey, let's try a different strategy
to avoid those. So that's another benefit of the CEO
employee split in yourself and how you approach things. Now the
third part that comes in and is essential for this all to work
together is self talk. That's just what it sounds like talking
to yourself. So if you get to a point where you're feeling
overwhelmed, what you want to do is look at your list of the few
things you have for that day and just say to yourself one step at
a time, this is what I'm working on today, there's only one of
me, there's only so much I can do. I've decided these are the
most important things to do, actually, the CEO version of me
has decided that and I'm just going to do them and at the end
of the day, relax, have a nice dinner, or maybe have a glass of
wine. And then tomorrow, I will fight the good fight. Again,
when you're feeling that overwhelmed. Just bring yourself
back to the list and say this is what I'm working on. I'm going
to work on it one thing at a time, I'm going to chip away at
the block or put one foot in front of the other, whatever
metaphor works best for you and just do that during the time and
if you find yourself getting pulled out of that employee
mind, just talk to yourself about that a lot of us have had
jobs before you had a job would you in the middle of the day to
say Hey Boss, I don't like to do this. Why don't we change the
corporate strategy? This seems dumb to me, or I don't really
want to do it. It's not fun. No, you wouldn't do that you would
do the work anyhow. And that's what you have to train yourself
to do. And then use the self talk to bring yourself out of
overwhelm. And reassure yourself that you just stick on the task
and do one thing after another. I promise you this, that if you
do that, you will find that you feel calmer, more productive.
And at the end of the week, and especially at the end of a
month, when you look
back, you're going to have gotten done so so much more than
you would have otherwise. And now if you combine this approach
with the double your brainpower approach, you're probably going
to be like "quadrupaly" as productive and effective as you
would have been the other way. By the way, I don't know
"quadrupaly" is a word, but that's okay. It can be now if
you're new to the channel my name is Dan. This is Dreams
Around The World and my mission here is to help you become the
best version of yourself all while creating the most awesome
life possible for you and those you love. Hit the subscribe
button and hit the bell. I publish new videos every week
often for ENFP. So hope to see you in the next one soon. Bye
for now. Look at these cats. I know it's probably maybe it's
not blurry back there.