When you have a lot on your plate it is easy to fall into overwhelm, to feel like you are never going to complete the tasks or projects that you have to do. By default we tend to focus on where the most urgency is, or even the easiest yet less effective issues first. You feel the emotions that we call stress, the feeling of increased agitation and that there are not enough minutes in the day. That if you take a day off or do something for yourself you are losing ground. When you fall into bed and think back you may have just shaved a small layer off the surface of the many many things that you had to do. This is a symptom of living in the place of urgency.
The good news is that there is a way out. Our minds operate in a 1, 2, 3, many way. Meaning that once we go over three, it falls into too many. The way I manage my to-do’s as well as the way I communicate when I am training people is to remember 1, 2, 3, many. It takes a little focus on the front end to pick the three things that will have the most impact, but the result is that you will be able to cross things off your list sooner. When we are building a new restaurant there are hundreds of things that need to be done, permits, demo, construction, painting, purchasing of equipment, hiring, plumbing…the list seems endless. Even without having a restaurant build on the books it would be so easy to fall into old habits if I didn’t remember 123.
Write down all of your pendings. Brainstorm, leave nothing out. Then pick 3. Or less, but no more than 3, and this is your mission: Laser focus on doing what will get you to the point of crossing them off your list. It could mean that you need to enlist someone else to take it over, or it could mean that you do one or two things that get closer to the goal, or it could even mean finishing it! As you look at your list, you may find that you can consolidate them, lose 10 lbs and exercise, for example, can be consolidated into “Take care of my body”. What this process taught me is to realize that so much of the “stress” that I would feel was because I thought I had so many things that only I could do that were crying out for completion. By narrowing my focus, and working with blinders on to the inevitable distractions that come my way, I am able to take my black sharpie and cross off my list every day.