October 06, 2024

Being overwhelmed (TLP 2024w39)

6 minutes

Last week I was totally overwhelmed, which resulted in me recording this episode one week late. Why does this happen?

Notes:

Last week I was totally overwhelmed, which resulted in me recording this episode one week late.

It got me thinking again about why does this happen?

My normal day looks like this:

First thing in the morning, I review my emails and messages and then add actions to my task list.

I use five.today to manage that task list daily, it's free to use if you want to give it a try!

Using that tool, I then decide what are the five most important tasks I need to complete today.

Some of those are new tasks, others are from my backlog.

If I close those five tasks by the end of the day, I can log off at the end of my day feeling satisfied.

Now that's my ideal rhythm, and frankly I manage to do that 99% of the time.

I am quite disciplined about this: remember you cannot manage others if you cannot manage yourself first.

Lately however I have been overwhelmed, so much so that the above rhythm has been completely disrupted.

A series of dramas is all it takes for you to immediately find yourself fire-fighting as soon as you go on-line.

In this situation, your agenda is effectively hijacked, and the five tasks you planned to do today are quickly forgotten about.

Working in this mode is fine for short periods, but is not sustainable long-term for obvious reasons.

For the past two weeks by the time I reached Friday, I was absolutely exhausted.

Eventually the fires are extinguished, the root cause analysis reports are written, and promises of lessons learned are made.

Once calm is restored, you get back to executed your daily routine.

This weekend, I will record two episodes to make up, as I want to keep the sequence going even if I am late.

I will post them a day apart.

I am also behind on creating videos for all of these recent episodes, so sorry for that if you are following along on video platforms.

Being overwhelmed is bad, but you will come out the other side of it eventually.

What I am working on this week:

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Notes and subscription links are here: https://techleader.pro/a/662-Being-overwhelmed-(TLP-2024w39)

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By John Collins