How to Stop Being Constantly Overwhelmed
for the past five or six months I have
spent the majority of my time feeling
somewhat overwhelmed pretty much every
single day I wake up and I feel like
there's just too much to do too much on
my plate and not enough time to get it
all done and this is a situation that I
really can only blame myself for for
about the past six years I've been a
self-employed entrepreneur which means
there's no boss breathing down my neck
there's nobody specifically telling me
that I have to get things done because
they want me to do them it's really just
me taking on more than I can handle
and I'm still kind of in this situation
but for the past few weeks I've been
taking some steps to rectify it to
actually fix the situation and bring
back some balance into my life so really
what this video is going to be is me
sharing the plan that I've outlined for
myself because I know that I'm not the
only person dealing with this I got a
lot of emails a lot of tweets a lot of
DMS on Instagram from people who feel
overwhelmed in their own lives as well
so like I said before a few weeks ago I
sat down I opened Evernote document I
started creating a plan for bringing
back some balance into my life and the
first step to that plan was doing
something that I'm going to call a reset
sprint now somewhat coincidentally my
friend Matt Diavel just released a video
on his channel a few days ago about
burnout and in that video he talked
about the reason for why so many people
end up burning out and the reason is
that they keep sprinting when you're an
ambitious person when you're an
entrepreneur trying to build a business
or your student trying to get ahead you
have a lot on your plate or you're just
a professional who has a lot of things
going on you often take on sprints where
you make sacrifices you don't get to the
gym as often as you should or you're
making really quick not so healthy meals
you're not sleeping as much as you
should and you have to make those
sacrifices to get ahead sometimes
extraordinary action is what is required
for extraordinary results
but the problem is once you get those
extraordinary results there are still
more opportunities in fact once you
become successful there are more and
more and more opportunities and it's
very tempting to take those on and the
situation that a lot of people find
themselves in is they keep taking these
opportunities and the Sprint's never end
which leads to burnout and eventually
leads to this feeling of being
overwhelmed so the key to not burning
out is to make sure you're not always
sprinting do sprints sometimes but then
eventually back off from that and
actually bring some balance back into
your life so this is one thing that I'm
definitely trying to do but I did
realize that if I wanted to really bring
balance back into my life there was one
last sprint that I needed to do right
now and it was a reset sprint I needed
to put some time into reorganizing my
life
because over the past several months
I've had so many different projects
going on that a lot of my organizational
systems kind of decayed a lot of that
entropy that I like to talk about seeped
into them so the first part of my plan
has been reorganizing things doing a
little bit of a sprint to reorganize
meant to do system to reorganize my
Evernote because I just moved to a new
house it's also a good time to evaluate
what I own see what I need to reorganize
physically or get rid of or donate or
just otherwise give away so step number
one if you are constantly overwhelmed
then carve out some time to do one of
these reset sprints evaluate all of your
systems your file organization system
your physical living space in your work
space your task manager all these things
and take some time to get them back into
a state where they reflect reality and
they are actually useful to you all
right so after the reset Sprint has done
step two of the plan is to re-establish
your routine this was really big for me
because I was so overwhelmed because I
constantly felt like I had to get things
done I had so much on my plate I kind of
let my routine fall by the wayside I
would wake up each and every morning and
think I have to get to work immediately
otherwise I'm gonna run out of hours in
the day and the ironic part is this
attitude of thinking I need to work all
the time actually made me less effective
I know I wasn't using every single one
of my hours as effectively as I possibly
could so letting my routine go to the
wayside was really it didn't gain me
anything at all so I have made a
commitment to myself to rebuild my
morning routines for build my daily
routines and I know that even if I have
a lot to do that one to two hour window
in the morning when I should be doing my
habits is kind of off limits now one
thing I want to bring up about doing
this is that if you're going to
re-establish a morning routine that used
to be quite complicated if you had a lot
of habits that you were juggling and
they all sort of fell by the wayside
because you got overwhelmed it's
probably not a good idea to try to pick
up all of them at the same time
and there's a concept from one of my
favorite books the motivation hacker by
Nick winter called success spirals and
the Alpha talks about how when you're
building new habits you have to start
small and eventually you prove to
yourself that you can remain consistent
on a small number of habits or something
that's kind of a small commitment and
over time you add more and more
difficulty maybe take on more habits or
you add more difficulty to habits that
are already in your routine and you kind
of spiral up but crucially if for some
reason you fall off the horse you're
probably not going to be able to climb
back on it at the exact same level you
were you have to go back to the
beginning of the spiral and start easy
again now some people may be able to
climb right back up and do exactly what
they were doing before and that's great
but if you try it and it doesn't work
then go back to basics establish a
really simple morning routine or really
simple set of habits prove to yourself
that you can do those going forward and
then slowly work your way up from there
so in my case that meant number one
getting on a habit tracker once more and
I'm personally using an app called
strides for this but number two
establishing a morning routine that was
really simple at first it was just
waking up early drinking a glass of
water taking care of my plants and doing
some push-ups that was it
I wasn't reading I wasn't writing I
wasn't doing instrument practice these
are things that I want to bring back
into my routine but I knew when I was
starting if I wanted to remain
consistent it had to be simple of course
now that I've been doing those things
for a few weeks and I've actually proved
to myself that I can do them
consistently I've started to add some
more things into the routine so now
making up and I'm also reading for 25
minutes I'm making sure to write for 10
minutes and I'm also practicing piano
every single day so in summary step 2
re-establish your routines and I think
that even if you're spending time on
your routines remember that when you
have these routines you're a little bit
more grounded there's more structure in
your life and I think you're gonna be
able to be more efficient with your
normal working hours when you have that
structure that brings us to my third
step of the plan which I think for me is
actually the hardest one and it's to
define your priorities and learn to say
no more often so one of the things that
I really struggle with is that as my
business has become more successful as
the audience has grown the opportunities
have increased as well and every time
there's an opportunity there's this
little voice in my brain saying you
should go for that like there's no
reason not to go for that you
leaving money on the table you'd be not
helping as many people as you could if
you let that opportunity on the table
but I also realized that one of my big
priorities in life is the process of
discovery learning new things of being
able to pick up new skills for example
like I said I'm practicing piano every
single day this is something that's
pretty recent in my life and even though
I'm basically a complete noob at it it
is a lot of fun and I've noticed that
every single time I sit down to the
piano and practice there's a
breakthrough like just the other day I
figured out how to play a 3 2 polyrhythm
on the piano and if you're somebody
who's been playing the piano for quite a
while and that probably seems pretty
trivial to you but for me it was
something that my brain just could not
do for like the first hour while I tried
to do it and when I finally figured it
out when I finally realized that one
hand was doing one - one - and the other
hand was doing 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 at the
same time it was amazing that feeling of
discovery is something that I crave and
one of the problems is that with all the
opportunities that come up in my
business there's like this voice in the
back of my head that's kind of telling
me any time you spend on things you're
not already good at on things you're not
already established at like playing the
piano is wasted time because you could
be using that time to make another video
you could be using that time to improve
your website to train your employees all
this kind of stuff why would you be
using it on something that you're not
established in your business is a force
multiplier and you're not using it plus
there's zillion other people out there
who are already way better at piano than
you'll ever be why would you do that and
this voice is toxic and I realize that
if I continually listen to it if I
continually put all my time into my
business just because I feel that the
force multiplier is there just because I
feel like there's more opportunity there
I'm going to burn out I'm going to feel
overwhelmed because the desire for
discovery is not going to go away it's
just gonna be kind of stifled but it's
still gonna be there and it's still
gonna cause me stress so step 3 of the
plan is to say no to more opportunities
in my business even if they are
lucrative even if it seems like I would
be a fool to leave them on the table I
have to learn to say no because I need
to have priorities and one of those
priorities is the joy of discovery so
I've actually printed out a list of my
current priorities and I put it on the
all right there and it says practice
piano get back to a weekly schedule in
the YouTube channel make sure I'm doing
the things that are actually important
to me and say no to anything that is
going to block those so hopefully this
is helpful in some way to you and just
to summarize really quick here step one
do a reset sprint get your systems back
in order beef a physical or digital take
some time to really do this correctly
step two re-establish your habits and
routines don't give in to the temptation
to let those things fall to the wayside
because you feel like you don't have
enough hours to do your work have work
hours and have hours for your routines
and then finally step three define your
priorities going forward and then learn
to say no more often it's really
difficult but it's worth it and if I
might make a suggestion one of those
priorities should be as my shirt says to
never stop learning to maintain that
constant joy of discovery this is
something that's really important to me
and I'm really trying to make more of a
priority in my life so if you aren't
doing this already then try to learn
something new every single day or at
least every week if you're like me maybe
start playing the piano or pick up a new
book or possibly start watching a
documentary on a service like curiosity
stream curiosity stream is an extensive
and constantly updated collection of
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that was actually created by John
Hendricks who's the founder of the
Discovery Channel which was my absolute
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unlike normal TV channels with curiosity
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whenever you want they're in your web
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they're on roku and on many other
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tons of different documentaries and
topics ranging from science to
technology to nature and lots lots more
and if you're looking for a
recommendation of where to start a
documentary that I really enjoyed
recently was called order and disorder
specifically the episode on these story
of information which traces the
development of how we communicate with
each other membership on curiosity
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a great way to try out the service a big
thanks goes out to curiosity stream for
sponsoring this episode and being a big
supporter of my channel and as always
thank you guys so much
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frankly thanks once again for watching
guys and I will see you in the next
video