FROM OVERWHELMED TO IN CONTROL

I caught myself a few weeks ago, not wanting to get out of bed. Mondays are usually my favourite day as it’s a fresh start, full of new opportunities but this morning I was hitting snooze, scrolling my phone and just could not find the motivation to get up.

I dragged myself to open the laptop and got hit with 86 unread emails, a full calendar, g-chats blinking and tasks that were due. 

I could feel my throat tighten and my heart racing.

I felt apathetic. 

For a good 15 min I was just staring at my screen, not knowing where to begin. 

I completed the morning huddle, then I just sat there staring out through the window. 

I was feeling overwhelmed, not from everything that was on my plate but from the feeling of having lost control. 

The truth was that I did not know the status of the different projects that I was working on. My priorities had all been mashed together. 

I was in the rat race of being busy instead of productive. Stuck in doing small things which did not move the needle. 

Unsure where to start to, I asked myself what I needed to feel more in control. The answer was a clear overview of what was going on. 

So I created a simple tracker, basically writing down the projects that I remembered working on. As things popped up in my head or on my calendar, I added them to the list.

The list grew bigger and bigger, I felt calmer but the overview was still not clear.

Last week I continued working on my tracker. I moved it from g-sheet into a g-doc, took time to organise it neatly and added links to the different docs belonging to each project. 

Finally I felt like I had a clear picture of where each project stood and could start thinking about the next step.

It’s still a work in progress but I can breathe normally again. The pit in my stomach is gone and I feel relaxed and more in control. 

#overwhelmed  #incontrol  #progress  #stressmanagement