Are you feeling overwhelmed? Well, chances are when you're watching this, you're not. But you may want to come back to this video when you are, because I'm going to offer you a simple seven step routine to follow when you are feeling overwhelmed. And the first step is know the enemy. To make a complete list of everything on your agenda that is contributing to your sense of overwhelm, take a fresh sheets of paper, perhaps a whole pad of paper, and list everything, every last item that needs to get done that is contributing to your third wound. For some people, it turns out that just having it there in black and white on a sheet of paper is enough to feel a sense of control and to lift that sense of overwhelm But we know that really only applies to the to the lighter senses of overwhelm.
If you're more deeply overwhelmed, you need to follow the rest of the routine and you will need a set of colored pens for this. So first take, let's take a red pen. Now, what you need to do with the red pen is go down your list and be ruthless. you're overwhelmed, you've got too much on you can't cope. So you need to be ruthless. Take your red pen and put a red line through any item that you can afford to neglect.
When you've done this, you've taken a number of items off your list and you're on your way. Put down your red pen and take another one, let's say a blue pen this time. Now, go down the list again. And now look for items that are still on the list that are not crossed out. These are the items which can afford to wait 24 hours or more. If you don't do them in the next 24 hours, and nothing bad will happen.
Take each of these and with your blue pen, start a new list, a tomorrow list. And on that tomorrow list transfer all of the items that come wait for 24 hours, take them from your current list to your tomorrow list, write them on it tomorrow list and cross them off your current overwhelmed list for your blue pen down. Now you've made some substantial inroads, but there's more to do. The next step you pen, perhaps a green one this time with this pen, go down your list and put an asterisk by any item that can be done if you're ficient if you're effective, quickly and under five minutes. Little Star by all those little chillers. Next, set yourself a little alarm for about 20 minutes.
And in that 20 minutes, work through as many of these small items as you can as quickly as you can only do them to the minimum acceptable standard. No perfection, no polishing, no higher quality, just do them to the standard that will do good enough to as many as you can, as fast as you can work with that frenzy for 20 minutes, and at the end of the 20 minutes. Relax, take a few minutes, drink a glass of water, maybe a cup of tea and relax and in that time, go through the list and look for the items that have no asterisk have not been crossed off either because they're not needed or they can wait these are the big fish These are the substantial items on your overwhelm list. Now have you noticed that we've broken one of the classic rules of time management with our overwhelm process so far, we've started with the little things rather than the big things.
And that's because overwhelm isn't a time management problem. It's a stress management problem. We're taking control. Once again, with the big things, good time management would say start with the most important or most urgent, good stress management says you need to make it easy for your brain to deal with. So start with the one that most attracts you. Once you've had a glass of water or your cup of tea or coffee, take on for 40 to 45 minutes.
One big item, you may be able to finish it or you may be able to split it up and make substantial progress in that 40 minutes. 40 minutes is about the maximum You won't be concentrating on a task. So again, set the timer and make good progress. At the end of that 40 minutes, you've now been at it for just over an hour. So take a proper break, have a wander around, get some sunlight, get some fresh air, get a nice cup of something and make sure you have a drink. And then repeat.
Go back to the list with asterisks that haven't been crossed off. And another 20 minute frenzy to cross off more and more of those small things, short break, and then another 4045 minutes on one of the big things. Two or three of these cycles make a huge difference. In fact, you can fit three or maybe four of these into half a day in half a day. You get enormous sense of control because you will almost certainly have killed off all the little tillers you'll have no small tasks remaining. You will have made substantial progress on three or four Big tasks and crucially, you will feel in control.
This is the point where you can genuinely assess whether it was overwhelmed or whether it was overwhelmed combined with overload, and you need to apply a more rigorous routine. But remember, overwhelmed it's about a subjective stress response. And the purpose of the overall routine is to give you back that sense of perspective and control. Follow those seven steps cycle around Tiddlers and the big tasks and you will gain control you will deal with