Not too long ago, I read a question online about how do you overcome overwhelm related to your to-do list? Than a few days later, during a presentation I was giving, one of the ladies in the room, made a comment on how her to-do list tends to overgrow to the point where the overwhelm takes over and she ends up doing exactly nothing.
Interestingly I started to read a great book, that I would recommend to everyone, The One Thing written by Gary Keller. I will not give you the short run on the philosophy behind the book, but the title kind of gives it all away.
Here is my recipe for when my own to-do list, gets out of hand.
1. I do a mental download. Dumping all thoughts on a piece of paper weather they are business or not business related, without any kind of sorting.
2. Once everything is on paper, interestingly nothing seems impossible anymore. So, I create a priority list from the chaos on the paper. Some things go strait onto my delegating and outsourcing list, some go straight into the virtual bin, because they are not important, at least not for now and some land on a priority list.
3. Then I choose the one thing that is the most important from the priority list and start with it.
Do you see the connection to The One Thing? What are your strategies to overcome to-do overwhelm?