Three Things I Do When In A Time Crunch

“You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.”
~ Timber Hawkeye

I want to share with you three things I do when I have more things to do than time available to do them in.

I know that in crunch times, it’s all too easy to fall into a state of overwhelm but I learned long ago that overwhelm is a choice and so staying out of overwhelm is also, therefore, a choice. Here’s what I do instead.

I reject overwhelm

I’ve written about overwhelm as it effects business owners several times over the years and I always talk about my belief that overwhelm is a choice.

If you think about it, it makes sense. If it weren’t a choice, how is it that some people can feel overwhelmed having far less to do than other people who don’t feel overwhelmed with far more to do.

It’s a bit like rain, one person can look out of the window see rain and feel down, whilst another person (me!) can look out of the window, see rain and feel uplifted. It all depends on how we think about rain (or overwhelm!) I learned many years ago that if I succumb to feelings of overwhelm, they paralyzed me and make it certain that I will in fact get far less done than if I choose to think about things differently.

So rather than collapse into thoughts of “this is impossible, I’ll never get everything done!!” instead, I get strategic and practical and I breakdown my list into priorities and start to take focused and sustained action.

I manage my energy

When feelings of overwhelm and stress are circling, I know that the easy route is to try and bury those feelings in food, netflix and doom scrolling. Believe me when I tell you that I am in no way perfect and have taken the easy route more times than I care to mention. It’s precisely because I’ve been down that road and know where it takes me, that when push really comes to shove I know that I need to do everything I can to protect my mindset and my energy. Something neither of those easy options do.

So instead of checking my phone first thing in the morning, listening to the news while I make breakfast, and then rushing around trying to do a million things (all while feeling heartbroken at the state of the world), I actually seriously slow the f*ck down.

The busier I am the more likely it is that I’ll take the time to write in my gratitude journal first thing, then when I get to my office, I’ll burn some incense, savour my cup of coffee and listen to calming music, usually from either Satnam Kaur or Beautiful Chorus before I even think about work.

The impact this has on my ability to stay calm, centered and focused is huge. Only then will I allow myself to tackle my workload.

I bend time

Years ago when working with my first Business Coach, I was working on a email course for my audience and in a session, when my coach asked me why I hadn’t done all of my homework, I complained that the lessons for my email course were taking forever to create. I was at that point taking nearly a whole week to create each lesson’s email.

My coach, who was fond of giving me meaty challenges, invited me to create the next week’s lesson in just 90 minutes. As you might imagine, I laughed in response. “not possible” I argued but he persisted. He told me to put aside 90 minutes the following day and use my phone to set a timer, the goal was to complete the email lesson before the 90 minute timer went off. I agreed to try but I couldn’t help feeling like he was setting me up to fail.

The next morning, I did as he told me and something miraculous happened. I did it. I finished the lesson in 90 minutes. I was amazed, it felt like magic and I haven’t looked back since.

I later learned that this is a tool called time-blocking and I’ve been a convert ever since.

My time-blocking game has advanced over the decade since that first experience with it and I now follow the 52/17 rule.

This means using a timer, I spend 52 minutes working on a specific task followed by a 17 minute break.

When I am working I am 100% focused on the task at hand and if I feel tempted to do something else, like check my email or scroll on social media, I only need to look up at my timer and know that soon I’ll have a 17 minute break in which I can do anything I want.

When I’m lucky enough to get a whole day to work on things I’ll plan out my whole day like this using a time calculator. It’s a full day but with plenty of breaks.

And there you have it, 3 things I do to stop me falling apart when I have more work than I can possibly handle! Is there anything you would add to this list? Or anything on this list you would love to try, hot reply and let me know.

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