7 Days to Becoming a More Confident Leader
Day 6 – Keep it Up
It’s Day 6 and there is only 1 day to go! Does that make you excited? Nervous? How are you coming along in the process? I am going to keep today on short so you have more time to spend working toward achieving your goal by tomorrow. The less time you spend reading this, the more time you will have to knock off those to-do items.
Do You Get Overwhelmed?
Do you ever look at your to-do list and become instantly overwhelmed? What happens then? For many people they will think of something else that they “need” to do instead of working on the list. For example if you are in the office you might check social media, get a cup of coffee, reorganize your desk, or decide it’s the right time to start sorting through the 2,500 email in your inbox, even though that isn’t on the list of things to do at the moment. If you are at home you might decide to catch up on the weeks’ worth of folding laundry, mow the grass, weed the garden, or clean out the garage.
Why do we do this? These activities only set us further behind on accomplishing the things that we are supposed to be doing at the moment. It only leads to additional stress as we procrastinate and then have even more to do in an even shorter amount of time. We are trying to avoid the pain of figuring out things we might not know how to do. If a task is going to be challenging, difficult, or even just boring, we avoid it. It makes us feel better in the moment, but be warned: it is always a short lived feeling. The work is still there waiting to be done, and it will only be harder the longer you wait.
Change Your Focus
There are a few different strategies to help you work past the overwhelm:
- Do the hardest thing right away. We often delay doing something that we think is going to be difficult. This does a few things for us, and none of them are positive. It delays us in getting our work done. And it steals our joy because we continue to stress about the fact that we haven’t done it yet. So, even though you aren’t working on it, it is in the back of your mind at all times. Once the most difficult item on the list is complete the rest does not seem so daunting.
- Choose a few things from your list that you can do quickly. Sometimes just the motivation of seeing items crossed off the to-do list can get us rolling. The smaller the list looks the less intimidating it can feel.
Take a look at the action items that you have established to help you set your goal. Stop thinking about the fact that you need to get them all done. What is the one thing that you can do today to make the biggest impact for tomorrow?
Put It into Action
When you choose that one thing – do it! It’s as simple as that. Then, when you have completed it you can use it as one of your 3 successes for the day.