This week’s mini training was inspired a beautiful woman (who shall remain nameless) who I had a conversation with last week.
She has a lot on her plate… along with all of the normal family stuff and running a business, she has some external contracts to complete, and plenty of her own work to do – as well as some exciting new projects to start…
And it all seemed to be a little overwhelming for her.
The longer that I spoke to her, the more I realised that I had been exactly where she was – sure, we were in different businesses and she had different projects to launch, but the overwhelm and frustration was exactly the same.
So I shared with her my keys for getting started when you just don’t know where to start, and I’ll share them here for you too.
1. Write it all down.
Often the biggest issue is just that you have so many ideas floating around in your head, or feel overwhelmed waking up in the middle of the night because your brain won’t turn off.
Writing things down helps to get everything out of your head and into a format that you can work with, and as an added bonus, it can help you sleep at night.
Just write it all down, and keep writing, until you completely run out.
It doesn’t need to make any sense and it doesn’t need to be sentences, dot points and key words are fine. Just get it out of your head and on to paper.
2. Break it down
Now is the time to organise all of the “stuff” that you wrote down and try and break it down into action steps. For example… if you wrote down “new website” I am sure that task looks huge and overwhelming. Try and break it down into the things that you need to do to get that to happen… eg: Buy domain name, hire web designer, write copy for about us page.
These little steps look much less scary and are much easier to achieve.
3. Talk to someone else about it
Sometimes your own head is the scariest place to be, it’s the place where you can make things bigger than they are, more than they are, and make a mountain out of a mole hill… so talking to someone else can really bring you back to earth. Get them to go over your plans with you, give their opinion on which things are a priority, and which projects can wait til later.
Be careful who you talk to though – friends and family often don’t understand what you are going through in your business. If you don’t have a business partner, then find yourself a wolf pack (that is – a group of other business owners, who you can trust, who will be honest with you and give you their opinion – I have one, it’s amazing.)
4. Delegate what you can
You don’t have to do everything .
I know!! That’s a revelation!! But you don’t have to do it all, there are people who can do things a lot quicker and a lot cheaper than you can do it.
Delegate to a business partner, delegate to friends and family where you can, and then outsource. Hire people who are qualified to do the job, who can do the job that would take you hours, in just minutes.
5. Start smashing it out
I’m sorry, but this is the point when you actually have to start doing things.
By now your list should be broken down into little tasks that are actually achievable, so it is time to start smashing out these jobs. One by one, task by task…. And then reward yourself for doing them.
Set yourself a timer and see how many you can get done in 45min, put some music on if it helps. Just get started….
So there you do…. 5 steps to start all of the overwhelming jobs that you didn’t know where to start.
I’d love to hear how you handle this too, let me know what steps you take.
– Sam