When I feel overwhelmed with too much to do and not enough time, I always revert to lists. There’s something magical about writing everything down. Writing it down is even better when I can start grouping things, assessing priorities, and breaking things down into manageable chunks. Somehow the act of writing everything, brings me clarity. Otherwise I find myself kind of floating around trying to remember everything, deciding where to start, and not feeling super overloaded.
Part of the relief, I think, comes from part of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” method. He asserts that writing things down is a way to capture it somewhere. This in turn frees up mental space to concentrate or focus on something else. In theory, this is because your brain is no longer burdened to remember things such as groceries to grab on the way home.
At work I use a “to do” app that captures everything. Flagged emails end up in the app. Tasks delegated to me by others end up in the app. Plus I can add things whenever I want to the growing list. Some things in the list have a date assigned to them. Other added tasks remain “captured” but undated. This is simply because I needed a place to note tasks that have lower priorities or less urgent time lines. However, they remain on the radar because they’re always available for me to scan and review. This helps me figure out when to plan them in.
I shared this method with one of my students once. While I felt calm and focused with my aggregated list of tasks, he had the opposite reaction. He remarked he felt stressed out looking at this enormous list, even with some things undated. I suppose seeing the scope of everything that needs doing can also make someone feel overwhelmed. But from my perspective, if I can’t assess the extent of the work, that makes me feel worse. Writing everything down also provides me with a way to start planning out how to get everything done. Sometimes this also means throwing a few things off the list, too. After all, we’re only human.