Organize Your Overwhelm

Overwhelm can deplete the energy out of the most enthusiastic business owners and bring the most creative entrepreneurs to their knees.  The more ideas you have, the harder it becomes to harness that creativity and tame it into simple steps you can take action on each day.

If your ideas are big and the amount of action you take is small, you start to second guess everything, and you might even find yourself questioning whether you have what it takes to succeed.

When this happens to you, it’s time to get back to the basics and organize your overwhelm.

When you feel overwhelmed, you feel that way because you have a bunch of things that need to get done and you’re not sure where to start, what to do first, and possibly how to do some of what needs to be done.

Here’s what you need to do:

Write it all down.

Write down everything you can think of that needs to be done. Part of the reason that overwhelm sets in is because when there is so much that needs to be done, and you are trying to organize and sort it all out in your brain, your brain needs some help. Get yourself a pen and a notebook. Start by making a list of all the big projects that you’re working on.

When I say write it all down, I mean everything, including your dry-cleaning, appointments for your pets, returning things to the library, or whatever is taking up space in your head, capture it on paper.

Organize it all by category.

After writing it all down, organize what needs to be done by theme or category. Some of what needs to be done will fall under customer service, others will be under marketing or new initiatives, and some things will be in the personal categories.

When you group and organize your list of things to do by category, suddenly, you’ll feel some of the overwhelm start to lift because now everything you’re thinking about is falling into nicely organized buckets of what needs to get done. Imagine walking into your closet and every piece of clothing is dumped together inside of a massive laundry hamper.  You need to find two matching socks and the thought of diving in makes you want to run; that’s what happens when your thoughts are not organized.

Outline the details.

Now that you’ve got all of your to-do’s organized, it’s time to work on all the nitty-gritty details.  When you review each category, your brain is going to remind you of all kinds of extra things that you need to do associated with each theme.  Trust me, write down the word Grocery List and watch what happens as you continue to work. Your brain is going to respond by reminding you of things that you need to pick up the next time you shop. The same thing will happen in your business.  Your mind can only manage so much information at one time. When you start by writing it all down, you’re freeing up space in your own internal memory to recall some of the details that go with the themes you’re working on.

Prioritize.

Now it’s time to decide what is most important.  Which of the items on your list have deadlines associated with them? What is a “nice to do,” a “need to do,” and “do this later on?”  Take your categories and put them in order of priority so that you can focus on the one thing that has the highest level of importance. When everything is important, nothing is important.

Assign and timeline.

Once everything is prioritized, it’s time to assign responsibility and timelines. Go through your list and figure out what YOU need to do, what you can delegate to someone else and perhaps, what needs to be put on a back burner. Don’t try to do it all yourself…that in itself will contribute to the overwhelm and burnout.

As the leader of your business, it’s important that you have a clear vision of where you are taking your business and what needs to get done.  When you fall down the creativity rabbit hole, it’s easy to lose sight of this and instead feel completely overwhelmed by everything you want to do.

A few nuggets of wisdom for you to consider:

Abraham Hicks said, “Make a decision and then make it right. There just are no wrong decisions.”

Karen Martin said, “When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.” As a business owner, you must decide what is a priority, and then, make that decision right.

Clarity doesn’t need to be as complicated as you make it.

Leave me a comment and let me know, did this help you organize your overwhelm? If you have any additional tactics or strategies to add, feel free to share below as well!