I’m so flat out, I don’t know where to start…

As a teenager, I loved massaging away tension of the furrowed brow. I felt more important dealing with apparent stress.

What’s with a state of busy-ness that’s so addictive?

If we are busy are we more relevant? Are we getting heaps more done? Inspiring our team? Getting important stuff handled? Multi-tasking brilliantly as we dance between tasks?

Or more likely we are flying by the seat of our pants, in a breathless state of frantic rush and clumsy chaos, doing overwhelm, forgetting to prioritise, procrastinating instead! Exhausting for us and for our team.

We may feel productive and that our work is more valuable if we rush. But is busy overwhelm worthwhile?

Overwhelm is Costly

We rush by choosing to do it all ourselves instead of strategically delegating to our team, to leave us time for strategic planning and the tasks we do most well
In the rush, we miss or fail to listen to important conversations or miss valuable insights. Our real priorities get lost in flat-tack rush. Stress not serenity rules the day. We multitask which research tells us is time wasting and unproductive.
We underestimate how long tasks take. We renegotiate deadlines or produce “rush standard work” because we’ve not allowed ourselves enough time to produce our best work.
We eat less well because we’ve not made time for shopping or making healthy, more sustaining meals.
We don’t enjoy what has become a reactive rat race with ourselves as we move from crisis to crisis instead of being proactive with time to envisage and plan the detail of our success.

Dealing with Overwhelm and Procrastination