Overcoming the Overwhelm

Our brains can only handle two hands, so handling 3 items means you have to learn to juggle.

A list is the single most powerful tool a person can use.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a paper person. You can ask anyone who has spent at least 15 minutes with me. I’m neither organized, nor administrative by nature.

I have to have help, if I want to win the battle against chaos.

Imagine a gray rectangular room with no doors or windows. Now, in your mind, create a yellow ball, and set it bouncing around the room. You can stop it mid-air, and make it do whatever you want. Zoom fast. Slow-motion. Jiggle.

Now add a red ball. You can easily manipulate two balls at the exact same time. One can go fast and other slow. One can stop, and start, while the other one is steady.

Now add a third ball that is purple. You’re probably wanting to tell me that you are just as good with 3 balls as two, but you have entered a state where the mind compensates for you. Just like you never actually notice the blind spot in your eyes, you don’t really realize that you are switching from two balls to two other balls so fast that it only seems like you have some control over 3 balls at the same time.

Make the yellow ball go slow, the red ball go fast, and the purple ball move in a jiggly way. You lose a ball every time you concentrate on one enough to “see” it. I have juggled all my life, and all the balls move in the same pattern, at the same speed, and it’s still really hard to manage them all.

Add a blue ball to your room.

You can’t even contemplate the idea of adding a 5th orange ball. It’s impossible.

So that means if you have 5 things to do today, you cannot possibly imagine them at the same time. This is why you become overwhelmed so easily.

The brain compensates by creating a marker for the others, so you actually think you are aware of 4 or 5 things at once. Or even 8 or 9 things.

Because you can’t understand that number of things, it means that functionally your 5 tasks are no different than twenty, or even thirty different things. You only know one or two at a time, and your mind rapidly jumps through a mental list. When you get to #3, you’ve lost the meaning of #1, and even the order that they’re in. #1 - #3 - #4 - #1 - #3 - #2 - #1. The rapid fire items move in and out of your mind quickly, and you are not able to hold onto the whole thing, or even know how many things it is that you’re trying to hold.

Behold the pencil
(or the keyboard)

1. Breakfast

2. Workout

3. Dress (optional)

4. Write article

5. Delete the spam emails

This is the way to get a real handle on things!

No it’s not!

It’s a trap!

This example is the right idea, but it doesn’t work like this. You always have more items than you think, because one task is usually several distinct steps that need to be arranged in order.

If you don’t know the very first step, and write it down, then that task will not actually get started. You want to do it, but you don’t know where to begin.

Your list needs a list.

When a task stops you because you don’t know the first step, the whole day devolves into overwhelm again. You have to list your lists. Unless you have a task well memorized, you can’t start without a bit of thought for how to do so. For instance, task number 4 is huge, and the very first step is not so obvious.

1. Decide on a subject to write about today by looking at that subject brainstorm list you made last week.

2. Log into Substack

3. Create a new article with title and sub-title

4. Write article

5. Find a photo or create a graphic to support it

6. Put it all together and edit

7. Publish

8. Promote on

   1. Twitter

   2. IG

   3. FB

   4. Threads

   5. Fediverse

   6. Etc.

9. Open Follower list on Mailchimp

10. Compose email & send

A list is your most simple way to create a strategy instead of just flailing about. You can conquer your day way better if you have a plan of attack.

Remember, to overcome the overwhelm…

1. List

2. List your lists.