You Broke your Big Goal into Small Tasks and STILL feel overwhelmed!
Take a big goal and break it down into small tasks… that’s the advice everyone gives, and it’s supposed to make the big task feel LESS overwhelming. But what if it doesn’t help you? What if you break your big goal down and suddenly it feels like a huge mountain to climb? You just went from having one thing to do, to having thirty things to do! Oversimplified perhaps but that is how our brains work. We might have had a really big task on our list, but all our brains acknowledged was that it was only one thing! Now we’ve broken it down, there’s a bit of our brain, the bit designed to keep us safe from harm, that’s telling us we now have way more to do and need to go have a nap to prepare for all this!
Breaking down a large goal, and not feeling over-whelmed sometimes takes more skill than probably comes naturally to us. We need to learn how to section up a large goal, how to identify the actions we can take, and how to work out what we can do NOW, or what we can do next. Another level would be a full timeline of when each part of this large goal is going to be actioned and achieved. Not many people have time for that!
What does happen is our list of smaller tasks, is now much easier to ignore! We even feel like we’ve done something, we might even feel back in our comfort zone – we did it! We made a list, phew.
What we want you to remember is that when you’ve made your list, that moment of discomfort, is exactly when you need to HANG ON. Hang onto this list and workout what will make it possible. The first question you might ask yourself is, now you’ve broken it down and see it in all its glory, how attached are you to this goal? This might be enough to put you off!
It might make you realise now is not the time. Neither of these are bad things.
The process of breaking the goal down and deciding what to do next is about understanding the scale of the goal or project. Once you have your project broken down, if you are hanging on through the discomfort you will be able to take it to the next level, BEYOND your overwhelm. BUT no-one tells you this stuff! These are the things you will be able to do next once you have your goal broken down;
You can decide the order in which you need to do things
You can choose or decide what needs to happen first
You can schedule future actions and goals
You can set yourself opportunities for celebrating the things you’ve got done (to keep your motivation going!)
Those are all skills that need developing, but how do we stop those feelings of being overwhelmed?
Ask for help – use your list to decide if you already know anyone who can help. Do you need professional support? What do you need to learn? Not only that but keep this list right at the top of your mind and talk about it. It makes much more interesting conversation than the weather and you might be surprised at who knows who, and what, that might help you. Even if it’s just that feeling of camaraderie so you know you are not the only one finding your to-do list overwhelming!
Commit to action – work out what are the things you can do to help you get closer to your goal and get them on your daily to-do list.
Focus on the action not the result - if you focus on the actions you can take you will find the opportunity to celebrate. If you focus on the result you will feel any failures more keenly and that might put you off making an effort, or trying again with what you have learned.
Be prepared to make an effort, and be OK with failing – yup, we said it. You need to give yourself permission to fail. If this is a big task that’s important to you, you might find yourself a bit resistant to making your best effort. After all if you don’t try and fail you have a built-in excuse! Making an effort, and not always succeeding is how we learn, you can do it better next time.
Isolate one thing and put the big list out of sight – once you know what you can do next, take it away from the big overwhelming list so you can focus on just that. Put your big list out of sight, so you remove the feeling of overwhelm that can stop us from starting. Check your main list frequently so you can keep your eye on the prize and keep pulling the smaller actions out of it and onto your daily to-do list.
Elevate the importance of the small tasks – if you are feeling overwhelmed it’s likely that you ARE overwhelmed! You probably have a lot on your plate. Elevating the importance of the small tasks will help you to really focus on the small things you CAN do, and to really value them. Something is always better than nothing so never underestimate the power of small things done repeatedly.
Remember, celebrating your small achievements is how you keep your motivation high, a powerful weapon against the overwhelm of a big goal!