**Somewhat ironically perhaps, I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and suddenly everything went NUTS so its been sitting in my drafts. Now I’m really behind. Oh well.
The past two weeks I have been doing nothing, on purpose. Well, not nothing nothing, but nothing extra.
Thinking about everything I wanted to do and learn, I was feeling very overwhelmed. So, perhaps contrary to conventional advice (just keep swimming), I knowingly and purposely put my head in the sand. I ignored my emails, I ignored my Feedly roll, I ignored the Cert IV that I signed up to do online.
I had lost my mojo.
Normally I’m a person who would just keep plugging away but this time that wasn’t working because I wasn’t interested. I would read a blog post filled with valuable information and just think, meh. My head wasn’t in it because my heart wasn’t in it.
That’s why I decided to take a break. And, thankfully, it worked. I’m now a bit behind but I’m back, with a clear head. The break has been invigorating and clarifying. The first thing I did was hit unsubscribe, either from things that weren’t providing value (but I should be reading) or that I wasn’t ready for yet – for example it’s no use learning everything about marketing months before I have a product.
No wonder I was feeling overwhelmed, I was trying to become expert at all of the things!
My advice to deal with overwhelm is twofold:
– take a break, if you can. In my case this is all stuff I do outside of my full time job, so I only have myself to answer to if I don’t do it. Obviously you can’t just stop showing up at work, but if you have some leave days available, use them. Even if you can’t afford a holiday, take some time to just stop, step off the carousel and get some air and perspective.
– pare it back. You can’t do everything you want right now. Make a list of all of your want-tos, and prioritise them. Then pick a couple and push everything else back. You can do it later, I promise!
It’s important to recognise this feeling when it’s creeping up on you and to take action. Because as soon as something you love becomes an overwhelming chore, you won’t love it for much longer.
And that would be too sad.
Note: just days after drafting this out, I came across this article with some excellent advice.
