The simple tricks to overcome ‘to-do’ list overwhelm

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

 Today, I’m sharing some super simple tricks to help you get out of the overwhelm and actually start getting things done without burning out. Because let’s be honest, as small business owners our to-do lists never end. And if you’re constantly feeling like you’re running behind, it’s time to change how you approach it.

 So let’s start with the real reason why you might be feeling overwhelmed. It’s not just about having too much to do because like I said in the intro, as business owners, there’s always going to be more that needs to be done. The real pressure comes from not knowing what needs to be done first, and also about being in an unregulated emotional state so that when you are looking at your actions, it just feels overwhelming.

Maybe this feels familiar to you. You sit down to work, open your computer, and immediately you start feeling stressed. You can feel like anxious feeling in your stomach, and you start thinking about all the different things that you need to do. And so you think I’ll quickly start something and then another notification pops up and you go over there and then you remember, oh my gosh, before I do that, I had to do that thing.

And so what’s happening is that you are jumping from task to task starting things, but not actually finishing them. And so because you start feeling this stress response building in your body. You might go and do something to numb the pain a little bit, and so you distract yourself by scrolling on Instagram reels.

And you find that you are scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, and then you go, oh no, I need to get back. I’ve got so much to do. And then you jump back into the email that you were writing and you see that you’ve got new emails and then they are distracting you and you think I’ll quickly respond to those.

And what you find is that the day disappears away and you haven’t actually got to those important needle shifting actions. Oh my gosh. I know this feeling all too well. And the reality is, if you are finding yourself behaving like that, it’s because you are in a reactive state instead of being in a calm and intentional state.

And so if you are wanting to shift things, if you are wanting to get out of that awful feeling of to-do list overwhelm, the very first thing that you need to do is work on regulating your nervous system. I want you to think about when you are in a calm and positive state. You can handle anything that’s thrown at you.

I know for me, I have some days and my kids can be melting down and it’s all happening and I’m like, okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I sort out that problem, I moved to that problem, and everything just seems to work out okay. And then other days where perhaps, you know, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep.

Maybe my kids were throwing up like they were one night this week I haven’t had much sleep. Then they wake up, they’re fighting, and then they might do one simple little thing like my sons spill milk all over the kitchen table. And it was kind of the final straw that broke the camel’s back and I snapped and was like, oh, that’s so frustrating.

Now, I just wanted to use that little example because I wanted to show how when you are in different emotional states, you can respond really differently and it’s exactly the same with your business. Some days you’ll find you’re able to just get in and tackle tasks one by one, and just try your best and be quite kind and forgiving to yourself if you don’t get things completed.

And then other days you’ll feel like a dithering mess. So how exactly can you attempt to regulate your nervous system? Well, there’s a lot of things that you can do over the longer term, and I alluded to one of them before, being sleep, eating healthy, getting regular exercise, making sure that you drink enough water.

All of those things will help support are your nervous system over a longer period of time. And then there are some things that you can do to have a calming effect on your nervous system in a much faster period of time. So some examples of this are things like deep breathing. I. And meditation. I know meditation’s a real energy shifter for me, but the one disclaimer I want to say on for example, meditation is that you need to be doing it from a truly spacious framework, not just ticking the box.

I know for me some days I’m like, okay, right, I’ve gotta do a meditation. I’ll squeeze it in. I’ll do a five minute one, and the whole time I’m in my head not actually being present in the meditation. I am still running through things in my brain at a million miles an hour. And therefore, if you are doing your meditation or doing your nervous system, calming activity from a place where you are kind of half in, it’s not going to have the same impact. So the opportunity or the invitation for you in moments like that is asking yourself, Hey, can I be fully present for the next 10 minutes and just park everything else and just be really, really present in this time to work on my nervous system regulation.

Now it’s kind of connected, but the next thing to do is to have an intentional mindset shift.

This is something I remind my clients and myself of all the time. You are not an emergency room surgeon. And as much as our body can feel like we are in such an intense fight or flight situation, the reality is for most people listening to this podcast, your clients aren’t gonna die if their website gets delivered a week later, or if you don’t get the client notes out on time or if their BAS isn’t done by five o’clock on that particular day. And I know that it’s really easy to say, but a lot of times when you are feeling stressed and panicked, you aren’t actually looking at things rationally. And we know from studies of the brain that you actually make worse decisions when you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed.

So ask yourself, how can I look at this situation differently? Huh. Maybe there’s some factors that you’re like, I simply cannot control what is going on. So the invitation is, can I just look at this situation with some fresh eyes? And then let’s talk about the elephant in the room. So after you’ve done the the work around mindset, around nervous system regulation, the elephant in the room is like, well, Clare, the list is still there.

So here’s some tricks that I suggest that you do to shift from overwhelm to clarity.

Firstly, get everything out of your head, like take five, 10 minutes and write down every single task that’s floating around in your brain. So I actually do this. I don’t just do the work stuff, I do everything. So I’ll do work stuff, personal stuff, life admin, and I personally like to hand write it all down. You can also do digital notes if that feels aligned. Another trick is that you can use, um, chat GPT or Google Gemini or some sort of AI tool, and you can actually use the microphone feature and just do a massive big dump of everything that is buzzing around in your brain. And you’ll find that even the process of getting everything down on paper will actually even make you feel better. Because a lot of time the the stress of your to-do list is try jumping from here, oh my gosh, I forgot about that. I’ve gotta do that. And your brain isn’t thinking ’cause it’s trying to remember all of these random tasks that are floating around. So once you’ve actually got everything written down, you’ll probably already start to feel a little bit lighter.

The next thing that you want to do is look at that big brain dump and start to categorize. So what you wanna start doing here is working out what are the actual needle shifting tasks that are on the action list? What’s urgent versus important, and what is busy work That doesn’t really matter. So, let me break that down a little bit more.

The actual needle shifting work is big strategic pieces of actions. So, for example, it might be going through and following up all of those potential clients to ask if they do wanna go ahead and work with you. When you’re looking at urgent versus important, I know for me, I’ll give you an example, recording this podcast. I did have a timeframe of when I have to have the podcast recorded, so this is something that is important and also urgent because there is a pressing timeframe on it.

Then having a look at the busy work. That’s a lot of things. I find that for me, the inbox tends to sit here, things that it’s like, yes, I know I’ve gotta get to all of that. There’s a lot going on in there, but a lot of it isn’t really high priority stuff. So once you’ve sort of started to think about your to-do list with that lens, come back through it again and really work out. What can be eliminated, what can be postponed, what can be outsourced, and what can be done quickly in less than five minutes.

So \ me share some examples of when I went and did this activity today. Um, how some examples that fit under each of those categories.

So examples of eliminated. One of the things on my to-do list was looking at building an app. So my new Mastermind, the Profit Collective, I really wanna be getting innovative and coming up with really amazing ways that we can work together with ease. And one of the things that I thought of was, what if I created an app? And it seemed really exciting and, you know, being an entrepreneur, yes, I wanna do something cool. And what I got my assistant to do was to do some research and we realized Kajabi already has an app and we can just create, encourage people in the the collective to download the app and my template, the recordings, everything is in there already. So when I saw that on my to-do list, I’m like, do you know what? We’ve already got a solution for that. I don’t need to go and build at an app. So that was an example of something I eliminated. I.

An example of something to postpone and also outsource. So something that I’m getting lots of emails about at the moment is my tax planning for the financial year ahead. So my accountant actually, each year we sit down, we have a look at the, the coming 12 months and we strategize some tax strategies to minimize tax, um, across both my husband’s business and my business and our personal finances. Now, this is a task that I just kept pushing and pushing because as much as I’m an accountant and I love spreadsheets, tax planning doesn’t exactly light my world on fire, when I can do something cool, like think about building an app, so. This kept popping up and I thought, this is important. It’s not urgent, but it’s important. So what I actually did, I both outsourced that. I said to my bookkeeper, can you please go and create a forecast? And it gave us some parameters using the same expenses as last year, um, and adding growth in these different areas or changing these things around. So I handballed that task to her within very clear instructions. And also I postponed it. I bought myself a bit of time because I’ve got someone else doing a bit of the grunt work there.

And then an, an example of something that could be done quickly. Um, I’ve been meeting with a potential assistant to support me when my assistant, um, Sally is unavailable or, you know, taking time off or whatever. And so I spoke to someone today and I realized, ’cause that’s lingering around my head, my to-do list. I’m like, I can just send an email in 30 seconds. Then that is off my to-do list. So that was an example of something that I did quickly.

So that’s the first step. Go through and think about what needs to be eliminated, outsourced, postponed, or done quickly, and that will already start to clear more stuff off that to-do list.

Now here is my favorite trick to overcome your to-do least overwhelm is to pick three tasks that will have the biggest impact if you get them done today. So these need to be big things that will actually shift the needle. So it might be sending an email to your email list. It might be, um, posting a social media post. It might be, um, reaching out to those potential clients who have been in touch with you but haven’t actually bought from you yet. So when you are doing this exercise, picking your big three, the key is to be intentional and not just be responding to what feels the loudest. So, like I said, that tax planning thing, it’s, it feels very loud right now. I’m getting really regular reminders about it. It’s taking up a lot of room in my inbox because I’m getting the ones for me and for my husband’s business. It feels loud. But if I’m being really intentional, it’s not actually the most urgent or important thing that needs to be done in our businesses right now.

So get your top three and then we wanna actually get in and start taking action. So the biggest thing that I would suggest is to eliminate distractions. Anything that you know that’s a distraction for you. The biggest thing I’ll tell you is that little thing that’s rarely out of your hand, your phone, can you go put it in a separate room on airplane mode? Because while that’s there, it’s gonna keep distracting you. And also have a look at your calendar. I do this at the start of every week and I really go through it and look ahead at my week and think, does this stuff actually need to be in there? And does it need to be in there on those days?

So, for example, um, I’m thinking of something last week I had a meeting in there and I thought, yes, that is important. That does not need to happen right now. There might be client meetings even, and you’re like, you know what? They actually don’t need to have a full hour, maybe half an hour might suffice for this meeting. So go through and really create some space in the diary. And one of the things that I love to do is I actually block my calendar if I’ve got something big to do. So I’ll go in and block out like a day. I’ve gotta record, write, and record a podcast. I’ll block a good two hours out of my diary. Because otherwise the time will be filled and I won’t tick off the things that I need to do. So time block, clear up the calendar, eliminate distractions. And the other tip that I’ve got is whatever feels like the most challenging task do it first. Um, I know for me, sometimes I just like to go to the easy ones and I’m like, I’ll deal with the big, you know, whether it’s setting up Facebook ads or having the uncomfortable conversation or leave that to the end, knowing subconsciously that what you’re doing is potentially deferring that because you know, you might not get to the three on the list today.

Look, here’s the cool thing about just having a couple of things on your today to-do list is that. If you get through those things, you will feel so accomplished. You won’t feel stressed, you won’t feel, you’ll feel like, do you know what? I know I didn’t get everything done, but hey, at least I’ve made some big strides forward today.

I. And what do you do if you’ve worked your little butt off, you did the time blocking, you had your phone in a different room, and you still didn’t get through everything? Well, first of all, don’t beat yourself up because I’m sure you were trying your hardest, and don’t waste your energy feeling guilty. You can roll ’em over to the next day. Or another suggestion that I have is if they really were things that, uh, you know, you really needed to move forward on, ask what kind of support you might need to knock them over. So an example of this, I definitely don’t recommend doing this all the time. You wanna still have a life outside of work, of course, but sometimes you might be able to say, I know for me, sometimes I’ll say to my husband, Hey, I’m feeling really overwhelmed at the moment. Can you please do the kids dinner, bed, bath tonight? I, I just have to get a couple of things done. And similarly, some nights he might say that to me. Now again, we don’t wanna be doing that all the time because we wanna be able to spend time with the family. But sometimes taking that spaciousness, getting that extra support means that you come into the next day feeling really fresh and accomplished.

So the trick with overcoming overwhelm, it’s not about perfection, it is about intention. And reducing particularly your levels of feeling stressed around it.

Last but not least, I, I really want you to holistically start to ask yourself some bigger questions. If, if you are finding that you are constantly in a state of overwhelm, if you’re constantly in a state where you are in a high cortisol state, ask yourself like, what’s going on here? Because if this keeps happening again and again, it’s not what go through periods where things are a bit busier or you’re feeling a little bit like there’s more on your plate than usual. But if you are in a constant state of this, you need to ask yourself a couple of things. Am I just overloading my schedule? Do I have way too much going on? Do I need extra support? Do I need to get some more people in my team? Do I need to get some extra support outside of work? Maybe you need to look at getting a cleaner or a nanny or something. And last but not least is do I need better boundaries? Because a lot of times the pressure that is on us is actually created by us. We constantly allow people to give us more things, contact us outside business hours, and then the, because you’re not honoring those boundaries, you are ending up in a state of overwhelm and stress.

So if you are someone who suffers from to-do list overwhelm, try these strategies. Let me know what you think. Come on over to Instagram, send me a dm, send me an email. I’d love to hear if this has been helpful in helping you to get out of, to-do list overwhelm and I just wanna take a moment and say a huge thank you for listening to the podcast. I really do appreciate you being here and your support, and I hope that you can feel the way that I am so grateful and that I show up each week to share as much value as possible with you.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio