What Do You Do When You're Hella Stressed?
If you're like me, you often bite off more than you can chew. There's nothing wrong with it, you're just trying to lead the most productive, fulfilling life. It's understandable. How you handle having too much on your plate not only affects the quality of work you produce, but also your level of client service, your relationships with your coworkers, and your overall brand. So, when I decided on this topic for this week, I thought it would be helpful to expand outside of "focus, map out, schedule."
1. The first step of "handling it" is accepting that you can only do so much. You can't change how many hours are in a day, you can't slow down time, and you can't go super saiyan. Everyone is human, and recognizing that you aren't a superhero will only make your life better, promise.
2. Prioritization is key. Even if everything seems like it's the most important task on your to do list, you're going to have to start somewhere. What I like to do is make a list and divide it into "urgent", "meh", and "can do later". Then, within each of those categories, I number all of the items. It's always easier to break it down into smaller chunks (yes, that was a biting-off-more-than-you-can-chew joke).
3. You're going to have to adjust your workload. If it's one of those days where you have to do a million things, that's fine. But if every day is that way, it's not going to be sustainable. Spacing everything out so you don't get burnt out is going to be healthier and easier and you will not hate your life.
4. Map out your progress. There's nothing more satisfying than crossing off a completed task. Sometimes it's nice to just have a check mark, but if you have a super extensive list, it might be nice to delete each item as you complete it, slowly diminishing the visual so it's more manageable.
5. Late is better than crappy (USUALLY). Of course, it totally sucks to not make a deadline. But is it better to turn in mediocre work and jeopardize your relationship with that client or be a little bit late but produce something consistent? Probably the second.
6. Don't forget to take a break. Overworking yourself will cause the quality of everything you do to suffer. What happens when your computer overheats? It shuts down. The same principle applies to people! If you gogogogogogogogoooooo, it's almost guaranteed you'll give yourself a blue screen of death.
Sharing is Caring
If you have any thoughts or feedback or extra knowledge, share it in the comments. The whole point of this blog is to help each other figure it all out!
