We've all been there. That feeling of having so much to do, but not having a clue to start — and from that builds a sense of panic, anxiety, and even dread, before you even get started. That then compounds on your inability to actually begin what you need to start, and it just ends up spiralling in that direction. In this post, I am going to lay out my experience and pass on to you some of my techniques and considerations that have helped me overcome this feeling in the past (and, ironically, in the present).
It is like going through a maze: you want to get to the middle, you want to get to the end — every turn you take is the wrong turn or a dead end, and you can't make any progress. This post will show you how you can make progress, and trick your brain into feeling as though you are making progress, to then allow you to make ‘actual’ progress.
Plan it by hand, even if it is just brief notes
Planning a task or a project by hand is really key for me, because it allows me to process what I'm thinking before I actually put pen to paper — and by the time I have put pen to paper, the thoughts are mostly formed in a cohesive way. Once one thought has been put to paper, then the other thoughts start to come together — they start iron themselves out. There might be some ideas you haven't even considered before this moment that tie in well with your previously considered ideas. That is all part of planning and the development of a task. The more ideas and the more confidence you have in a task before you actually begin it, the quicker you can carry it out and the quicker you can get to perfecting it, as it were. On the other side of things, if you come up with an idea as part of the plan that isn't so great and isn't so useful, then you can just cross it out and nobody's any the wiser (aside from you, which is the important part!). And so, it doesn't have a massive impact, because you haven't actually started the physical creation of the project. Everything is a lot more flexible at this stage. For example, if I was planning an essay or this blog post, I might have few ideas of what I want to say, but by the end of planning, I might realise that one or more of these ideas doesn't fit within the piece, and I can just take it out, discard it. If I had started writing, and only then realised that some of my ideas didn't work, then that is a lot more editing to be done in the long run — and can generally lead you to feel quite despondent about whatever you're doing. So, as you can see, planning and writing things down on paper is part of cutting all these out and making things easier for yourself.
Make several other separate plans
You might be thinking, if I've already made a plan then why do I have to make more plans?! The idea is that the plan that you've originally created is a plan for the overall project or task, however these plans will be more specific to what you would like to do on the day, the next month, or the next year — depending on the size of the task. Plans of plans. For example, if I was going to write an essay I might only need to make a plan for what I'm going to do over the course of a day, however, if I'm planning on editing my book, that is going to be a much more longer process, and it's going to take lots more smaller steps in order to get it right. You can see the approach is different depending on the type of task.
Say you were writing a historical fiction novel. Before you even start writing or planning, you're going to have to do quite a bit of research around the time in which you're novel is set — and that can take several weeks or months — or even years, depending on how you want the project to turn out, and how much you already know about a certain period of time. You can begin to see that the writing of fiction can be broken down further into how much do I already know, how much don't I know, what time periods do I need to research, how much research is going to be needed to be done as when I come across a particular situation? All of this is somewhat unpredictable, but can be planned for. If you have structure of how things are going to turn out then you have more of a guide as and when you get to a certain point, or should things need to change. An everyday example might be writing a shopping list: you might write down some items that you know you need, and some items that you might need — but it might turn out you don't actually need any of those items. You might just need a carton of milk. It's setting yourself up to have an idea of what you need, whilst also offering the opportunity of flexibility.
Don't be afraid to go back and change things
These suggestions around planning and getting past the resistance of having so much to do, but knowing where to start, are really about tricking your brain into starting with something. Because once you start with something, you can make progress on everything. Getting yourself into such a state of worry that you can't complete anything is only going to compound on the stress and anxiety, as we've already discussed. We have already touched on how these plans can develop ideas naturally, and can allow you to view and approach a problem in a different way than you otherwise might have done, had it just been considering in your head
We have also discussed how the plan makes it more flexible for things to change, but that also doesn't mean that — as you start writing or completing a task — you can't go back and restart or change things as you go. Planning a task can change, but the outcome that you have planned has not changed; so by changing things, you are changing direction. but you're not going off course. Sorry to use writing as an example again, but I might have a plan for a short story, and I might have an idea of where it's going to go, who is in the story, the conflicts, the setting — but it might need me to write at least a few paragraphs to fully understand how these different components come together. That does not mean that the paragraphs written are a waste of time, because they have allowed me to iron things out further, and these paragraphs may still be used in the final piece. It is all just about allowing my mind to run free and get rid of the rubbish that is otherwise ‘clogging the pipes’, you could say. And if we go back to the example of a shopping list — just because you've written ten items on the list, that does not mean you can't buy an eleventh. You might realise the eleventh item of a lemon is a key component of your pasta dish that you would have otherwise have missed. To be honest, I don't particularly know what writing, pasta, and shopping lists have in common but it is just an example of how these approaches can be applied to all areas of life.
Be aware of key times and dates
I say this because it can help you organise the time frame in which you have to complete something. It is, after all, the main reason why we have dates and times in all aspects of life — so that we can gauge how long things are taking, and how long in the will take. If you know that a task is going to take six months, then you have six lots of one month to plan, and six months is a long time frame. You might want to break it down per week, per month, every three months, to work out what you want to achieved. But then it can also be a reminder to yourself that you may not yet need to start the task yet. For example, I have an essay due in a few weeks, and I have only just started it. A week ago, I was panicking that I had not already made some progress on it, but then I reminded myself that I have several weeks to complete it, and I already have a plan of where I want to go with the essay and what research needs to be done. I am now part way through this research. This was all pressure I'd put on myself. This has tricked my brain into thinking that we are making progress (as I literally am). Another point worth considering is the dates are completely separate from our anxiety, so however wound up you are becoming at the thought of completing such tasks, these dates are constant — and although they may change — they are a reminder and reassurance for when we are making the situation worse for ourselves than it is in reality. For example, if you have two weeks to complete a project, and then you get stress because you don't know where to start, by the time you've come out of the anxiety spiral you will still have that time to focus and get going on the task.
1, 2, 3 and go
After all that planning and preparation, you may still feel stuck. Perhaps it might be the thought of how much you have actually got to complete. I see that as a slight downside of planning, but even then the monumental amount of work has been broken down into chunks, which theoretically makes it easier to tackle one step at a time.
That's why I suggest you say ‘one, two, three and go’ to yourself. Once you are ready to go, you need to stand up, and make progress on that task however small. Can you see how the ‘1, 2, 3’ would be gearing you up to separate from the resistance, and then allowing you to make the jump into your task? It's a bit like if you were doing a skydive, for example. You may be standing in the plane, but once you are falling you can only fall, and then you can only stop when you complete it.
Can you see how these strategies will help with knowing what you need to do, and wanting to do it, but seemingly not being able to get yourself to you start — and get yourself into a rhythm of completing a task? As with anything, it will take some time to get used to these strategies and tweak them in a way that suits the way that you want to work I found that once I started researching strategies to help myself, that one strategy led to another, and it has led me to be able to build a bit of a personal repertoire in terms of what can I do in such and such a situation. What are the different steps that I need to go through in order to help myself — and then if I can't help myself, what do I do after that?
Finally, I want to make it clear that feeling overwhelmed by a task is a natural process. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Just know that everything that I have discussed with you could in some way help break down overwhelm, and get you started; ultimately breaking that task paralysis.
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