Motivating Business Mums. Debbie O'Connor
need them (a couple of days beforehand if preparation is required, e.g. a present to buy). Just make sure you check it every day!
5. De-clutter—Don’t try to de-clutter a whole room. Break it down into individual shelves or drawers. Dedicate 15 minutes a day to making progress and put each item into one of four buckets—keep, throw out, give away (charity/ freecycle.com), sell (ebay.co.uk, gumtree.com).
6. Put systems in place—Design systems and routines. For example, when the children get home from their swimming class, rinse and dry their things then re-pack them into swimming bags for next week, and create rolling two- or three-week menus. Teach your kids routines such as the morning routine so that they can get themselves ready, rather than having to be nagged (a pictorial or written routine on the fridge can work wonders!)
Get it all done
7. Delegate—Don’t take everything on your own shoulders. Delegate or outsource tasks where possible and make sure the children have their own, age appropriate, responsibilities.
8. Plan—“Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Many things on our to-do list are not actions at all, but ‘projects’ requiring two or more steps. Write out all the steps so you know where to start and what is stopping you. Make sure the first step is a clear physical step which you know how to do.
9. Be punctual—Calculate your ‘Stop Working on Everything Else Time’ (SWEET spot) by working backwards from the appointment. Include plenty of buffer time for unscheduled delays—at least ten minutes when leaving the house for the inevitable dirty nappy, lengthy toilet visit, accident or itinerant shoe.
10. Stop procrastinating—Select an issue which needs thought but which you have been putting off contemplating. Start a timer for exactly five minutes. Brainstorm (do not judge) the issue non-stop until the timer goes off. Read through and underline any significant insights or actions. What can you do first?
These are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more techniques to cover, and much further depth to go. If you would like to move from hectic to effective, contact me to find out which of the packages I offer would suit you. Don’t procrastinate!
Wishing you organisation, efficiency, effectiveness and overall balance,
Anna Davis, www.BalancedMum.com
Coach, consultant and time management expert, Anna also does career coaching for people who are dissatisfied with their current career situation or returning to work after a child, and personal coaching to provide support to help you achieve your goals.
The essential question is not, “How busy are you?” but “What are you busy doing?”
Being Overwhelmed, or What to do When all the Balls are Threatening to Drop at Once
Fiona Muir
Whether you are for the most part a planner or someone who prefers to ‘go with the flow’, there are times in all our lives when things happen which are seemingly out of our control and it can feel as if we’ve been put through the spin cycle on the washing machine a couple of times, dropped on a treadmill at fast speed and been chucked 100 balls to juggle in front of a watching crowd.
The first thing we have to do once we recognise that we’re in a situation like this is metaphorically step off the treadmill, put down the balls, turn our back to the crowd and get our balance back.
So, what can you do today, right this moment, to help combat being overwhelmed?
As being overwhelmed can be experienced as a physical, spiritual and psychological state, it helps to do physical, spiritual, and mental and emotional exercises in order to become unstuck and move forward.
Physical Jump-Start Exercise
Firstly, centre yourself physically. Just take a quick moment to observe where your shoulders are at the moment. If they are somewhere around your ears, consciously drop them down and take ten deep breaths from your abdomen, breathing slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Spiritual Jump-Start Exercise
From a spiritual point of view, if you have a belief in a higher power you’ll probably find it helpful to take a short time to hand over the things you know are out of your control to your higher power through prayer, freeing you up to concentrate on taking action on the things that are within your control.
Psychological Jump-Start Exercise
If you find you have a problem that keeps running through your thoughts and taking over your headspace and draining your energy, take control. And if there is nothing you can do immediately to solve it, make an appointment to allow yourself to think about it for half an hour at a future allotted time e.g. 10 o’clock tomorrow morning. Make a promise to yourself to consciously put the situation out of your mind until that time, and concentrate on taking action on things you can change or move forwards today.
Watch your ‘internal chatter’ very carefully at this point. This is the things we say to ourselves. These can be very destructive and add to the feelings of being overwhelmed. For example, be observant for thoughts such as “I can’t believe you’ve got yourself into this mess again, it’s your own fault, you’ll never learn, you’re always letting people down”. These thoughts are counterproductive. It might seem strange at first, but make an effort to change your internal chatter to the kind and supportive way you’d react to someone you love who came to you with the same situation e.g. “I’m sorry you’re so stressed, I know you don’t like being in this situation, it’s not ideal but you will get through it and learn from it, I love you and have every confidence in you. Who and what will help you the most right now?” This takes time and practice but is deeply empowering and there are many coaching tools to help you observe and change your negative self talk for the better.
Examine the Juggling Balls…Are they Needs or Wants?
Next, it helps to look at each of the balls at our feet and decide which of them you absolutely have to pick up. To do this, it is important to examine them and to differentiate between the needs and the wants.
Wikipedia defines a need as, “something that is necessary for organisms to live a healthy life. Needs are distinguished from wants because a deficiency would cause a clear negative outcome, such as dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as food, or they can be subjective and psychological, such as the need for self-esteem. On a societal level, needs are sometimes controversial. Understanding needs and wants is an issue in the fields of politics, social science, and philosophy.”
With clients I’ll often use a wheel of life tool which helps them break down their life into its component parts, to find out what is and isn’t working for them in their lives. Your life’s component parts might look something like this:
My Life: What matters most today?
My body
my mind and emotions
my soul
my children
my home
my finances
my vocation
my