Goodbye overwhelm…

Today I am sharing one of my favourite ways to reduce overwhelm that can also save you several hours every week. 

Many mums struggle with a never-ending to-do list and the accompanying feeling of overwhelm - this strategy will help you get some precious time back that you can spend doing something you’d rather be doing.

First of all, I want to ask you - how is your to-do list looking? On a scale of 1-10 - with 10 being ‘I’m so overwhelmed I don’t even know where to start’ - how would you rate your busyness level?

Are you trying to do everything or thinking you have to do everything? Are you thinking - ‘this has to be done now, it has to be done by me, and (if you’re a perfectionist) it has to be done perfectly’?

I’m guessing if that’s what you are thinking you are feeling a lot of overwhelm.

There’s a (not so) funny thing about overwhelm - when we feel overwhelmed we often get less things done, and then we end up with an even longer to-do list!

We can also end up feeling resentful when we think we’re the only one that does anything, which can put strain on our relationships. Our overall wellbeing can suffer too, as we have no time left to do anything that we actually enjoy doing - not to mention get the sleep and exercise we need to thrive.

Oh, and maybe throw in some self-criticism and judgement too whenever we look at the growing list of unfinished tasks, just to round things off… 

It’s not fun.

So, what’s the solution?

The solution is to sit down with your to do list and your calendar (or if you don’t have either of those, a piece of paper that you can write down all of the stuff you’re currently carrying around in your head trying to remember) and then use the 4 Ds process on all of those things (this is a slight twist on the traditional ‘4 Ds of Time Management’ used in the workplace).

What are the 4 Ds?

They stand for:

Delete, Delay, Delegate, and Diminish

Here’s what you need to do at each step:

Delete - this is fairly self-explanatory - you need to go through and delete anything from your to do list and your calendar which you are never going to do or don’t want to do anymore. Be honest and ruthless here. Things that stand to be deleted are usually things that (at least for now) are fantasies - things that in an ideal world you would do, but if you’re being honest with yourself, aren’t going to happen in this season of life. Don’t worry - if they are important enough, they will pop up again. At the moment all they are doing is making you feel bad. The other things that stand to be deleted are those people pleasing activities that you are engaging in that you don’t really want to do but you are too afraid of what other people will think or feel if you stop doing them - try and be as ruthless as you can and delete those things too.

Delay - What is on the list or your calendar that you can’t bring yourself to delete, but you are also not able to do at the moment? Delay or defer these things to look at again at a later date - but just be careful, if these things keep popping up and you keep delaying them, maybe they really need to be deleted.

Delegate - Of what you have left, what can you give to someone else to do all or some of, or at least help you with? Don’t be tempted to say this is too hard - you need to look out for yourself and look after yourself. If you don’t ask for help, it’s unfortunately the case that other people won’t offer - often not because they don’t want to, but more likely because they haven’t noticed. I know asking for help or delegating can be tricky for some people - if you want help cleaning up the mind drama about that, reach out to me and I can help you.

Diminish - Diminish obviously means to make smaller, and you can make a task smaller in a few different ways. One of my favourite ways is to do B minus work - as in, it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough and it’s done. You can save so much time when you just let yourself do things to a B minus standard - trying to do everything perfectly, or thinking that things have to be done a certain way otherwise they aren’t worth doing means that often those things never get done or they take sooo much time to do. Set yourself a timer and do the best you can in that amount of time and then be done - you will be much more efficient and you will save so much time.

The final, unmentioned D is obviously ‘Do’ - which hopefully is a lot more palatable now that you have cut your to-do list in half and reduced the overwhelm. 

You can apply this on a broad scale - looking at what’s on the calendar for the month, or for the next 3 months, or you can even apply this on a narrower scale - just say you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed on a particular day - you can pause and reassess in that moment what you had planned to do that day and apply this 4 Ds process. What seemed like a great idea when you planned it a month ago or even that morning, might not fit in with your priorities any more and now might not be the time to do it.

For now, go ahead and apply this process and regain some hours back in your week. Make sure you think about what you WANT to fill those hours with - be intentional - what will refuel you, what have you been putting off that you really want to do but you don’t think you have the time to do? Put those things on the calendar before it gets filled with things you think you HAVE to do instead…

I’m here as always to help you with this process if you’re finding it hard to do - reach out to me at jenny@jennypercy.com to hear more about how I can help you find balance in your life.