I’ve written before about my favourite coffee table/toilet book, Richard Templar’s Rules to Break. Whilst I mostly bought this book because it appeals to my inner-rebel, it’s full of snazzy rule-hacks which, if followed, will undoubtedly lead to a happier, less worrisome and more fulfilling life.
Here’s another of my favourite swaps.
Rule to break: “There aren’t enough hours in the day”
Swap it to: Know your limitations.
This is something that I’ve both said myself and heard from other many times. And I’m willing to bet that you have too. Feeling ‘stressed’ and overwhelmed; that you have so much to do and not enough time to do it – is something many of us experience in the modern world, no matter what our cultural, personal, professional differences might be.
It’s a very dis-empowering feeling, without any positive consequences.
If your work and home life is haunted by the spectre of an unremitting to-do list and the ghosts of jobs undone, then it’s time to re-think your list making. We all wish that there were more hours in the day, but there aren’t. And wishing that there were will only reinforce your feelings of being overwhelmed – of not being able to cope.
So what’s the answer?
Essentially, you just need to be realistic about what you can achieve in a day. Make it your daily ritual to consult the ‘master’ list, simply to choose a few achievable priority tasks for that day, and let this mini-list be the only tasks you look at for the remainder of the day. You’ll very likely achieve more, or at the very least feel less overwhelmed.
And for goodness sake – learn to say no, to others and to yourself.
Anxious-Ambition.com 