Originally appeared on: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/qdtarchive/coping-with-too-much-to-do/
September 23, 2008
When there’s more than you can possibly do, you have to drop something.
Today’s topic is coping with too much on your plate. The quick and dirty tip is to look to your outcomes and prune, prune, prune.
My name is Stever Robbins, and I’m addicted to having too much on my plate.
When I was a kid, my parents let their friends Bill and Karen take care of me one weekend. Karen made macaroni and cheese for dinner. My favorite! But she gave me too much. I protested, but Bill insisted: “You’re not leaving this table until you clean your plate.” Four and a half hours later, he gave up. The score: Stever, 1, Macaroni and Cheese, 0． Bill died many years later and it had a profound effect. When I was done celebrating, I realized he was trying to teach me a very important lesson.
You see, these days I put too much on my plate. See, I’ve focused on my commitments, just like I recommended. And somehow… I’m still trying to bite off way more than I can chew.
Yes, I know, I’m the host of the Get-it-Done Guy, but that does not exempt me from the harsh reality of life: there’s only so much I can do in a week, even if I am a creature from another dimension with a life span of centuries.
Drop something to reclaim your time
The tip is to drop something. “What?!” you cry, “That’s obvious!!” Uh, huh. Sure it is. Take a look at your list of ongoing projects. When was the last time you resigned from an important committee, broke up with a spouse so you could spend more time at work, or put your kids up for adoption to make more time for the bowling league? See? It’s not as easy as it looks.
When you’re overwhelmed with ongoing demands, you have limited options. You can start doing a crappy job at everything, you can try to do everything and instead become a basket case, or you can choose something to drop.
My commitments relate to just three life goals: getting a manly-man body, running a successful coaching and consulting business, and building a wide audience for my burgeoning media career so I can become a famous personality and be invited to Brad and Angelina’s house for lasagna (not macaroni and cheese). If I were Arnold Schwarzenegger, I could do all three at once and be governor of California. Sadly, however, my pecs aren’t quite that big. Yet.
Consider your commitments against your goals
So I need to reconsider these ongoing commitments by matching them against my major life goals.
Goal #1: Getting a manly-man body. I only have one commitment related to this goal: working out. That stays, because my vanity is way too important to neglect.
Goal #2: Running my business. The commitments are a blog, newsletter, and product development. The product’s almost done, so that stays. The blog and newsletter take tons of time, but do they get clients? Not so much. My traffic is relatively low. When I’m published elsewhere, I get clients. Maybe I could write less and reprint existing articles in more places. In the time it takes to write one article, I can adapt existing articles for a dozen other publications.
Meanwhile, if you’re interested in leadership or entrepreneurship, please visit, so the articles don’t all go to waste!
Goal #3: Building my media empire. The podcast, blog, book, and Twitter all relate. Maybe I can share content between the podcast and the book. After all, they’re based on each other. Duh! And the blog and Twitter can go on hold until the book’s done. (Unless Brad or Angelina are followng me. Brangelina, if you’re out there, let me know and I’ll reprioritize.)
Drop the commitments that don’t measure up
Wow! That was fast. I’ll be suspending one blog and newsletter, putting the other blog and Twitter on hold until the book’s done, and combining my podcast and book writing efforts. That’s a huge reduction of effort in what, four minutes of thought?
Do try this at home! List your commitments—the projects and organizations that use regular time in your life. Group them by major life goal. Then for each goal, look at that goal’s commitment list and drop, combine, or delay commitments. You’ll be amazed how much you can remove from your plate without sacrificing one iota. And even though I’m not totally sure what an iota is, it sounds like it would go great with a nice, big plate of macaroni and cheese.
For a Quick Tip on organizing your to-do list priorities so you can get through them quickly, head on over here. And for a Quick Tip on multitasking, click here.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
RESOURCES:
/productivity/organization/how-to-accomplish-your-commitments – episode where I say “focus on commitments”
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Articles on leadership, entrepreneurship, and general management
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the Get-it-Done Guy podcast, an iTunes top-10 business podcast, from 2007 to 2020. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a degree in Computer Science from MIT.
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