3 Mistakes People Make When You’re Overwhelmed – And 2 Simple Keys to Fix Them

Mistake #1 is that you actually think you can do it all.  You’re not some super-human that has unlimited time to get things done.  We tend to underestimate the amount of time that a given task will take by about 50%.  So if there are 10 things on your to do list for today, the odds are you’ll get to half of them at best.

The problem is that compounds the size of your to do list, which takes you from overwhelmed to drowning.

The 2nd problem is that you only get through the fires and you never get to the strategic stuff that could really propel your business forward.  This is about opportunity cost – you’ll never realize what could be, or worse, you miss out on sales or meetings because you’re missing deadlines.

3rd is that you resign yourself to thinking this is “just the way it is.”  So you subconsciously start to settle – you give up on your dreams.  And then your business isn’t fun anymore.  It’s just… work.

Here’s How To Fix It.                                                                         

KEY #1: Stop thinking HOW, Start thinking WHO.  Your list still needs to get done. YOU just don’t have to be the person to do it.  For your whole life you’ve been taught that if you want something you have to figure out how to get it.

Instead, ask a different question: WHO can get this done for you?

I’ve been outsourcing my calendar management for 2 years now – a task that chewed up 30 minutes a day, 3 minutes at a time.  The cool thing is that it has freed up about 11/2 hours of “pick up / put down” time for those 3-minute scheduling tasks.  And I get the confidence of knowing that my calendar is under control and I don’t have to do it.  It’s beautiful .

KEY #2: Do Your 3 TOP 10 Lists.  Your Top 10 Time Wasters, Your Top 10 Most Frustrating Things, and Your Top 10 Most Favorite Things to do.

Get rid of your time wasters and frustraters.  Sometimes these can be done through a partner, like The Benefit Works team.  Sometimes you can use a platform like UpWork.  We recently changed CRM systems and had to combine and scrub two, 7,000+ record databases.  An “Excel Wizard” on Upwork had that task done in about 10 minutes.

Imagine how much time will you free up when you get the tasks you dread handled by a WHO, who is not you?

Imagine how overwhelm just starts to fade away when you’re asking WHO can get this done instead of HOW do you get it done?

Want to learn how to transfer your WHAT’s and HOW’s to a WHO?  Give us a shout.  We’re pretty good at it.