Feeling Overwhelmed? Tap into the Power of Doing What You Can

“You can’t do everything, but you can do something. Do that thing and hold your head high.”

– Chris Guillebeau, Time Anxiety

Are you feeling overwhelmed about facing a daunting task? 

Or perhaps you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work that needs to get done?

Or perhaps the relentless flow of e-mails pouring into your inbox is causing you angst?

That was the case for me. All the unread e-mails (and the ‘read but not yet archived’ ones) felt like a giant anchor, holding me down…drowning me…making me feel guilty and like a failure because I was always so far behind.

Or rather, all the unread and unanswered e-mails were making me feel like I was perpetually behind the eight ball. What frustrated me most was that try as I might to stay somewhat on top of at least the important-to-answer e-mails, whenever I opened up my inbox/s again, I felt overwhelmed at the sight of all the NEW unread e-mails…in addition to all the old ones.

I knew I had to come up with a better way of dealing with this situation. My work (projects still had to be moved forward via e-mail) and my health (mental and physical) depended on it. But I did NOT want to spend huge chunks of my day replying to e-mails, sending new ones (which generates more e-mails), deleting and archiving old ones.

And ‘getting caught up,’ I began to realize, was a fantasy.

Then I came across the book, Time Anxiety; The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live by Chris Guillebeau, and I found a brilliant solution! About a third of the way through the book, I came across a passage about the author’s personal experience with feeling overwhelmed with his e-mail inbox…and how he decided to deal with the problem by turning it into a ritual.

A ritual? That almost sounded…sacred!

“After hiding from inboxes day in and day out,” writes Guillebeau, “I decided to turn them into a ritual. The ritual was to do what I can, for a certain amount of time, and not worry (as much) about the rest.”

“Completion was no longer the goal,” the author admits. “I wasn’t going to hyperoptimize to the point of perfection, but I also didn’t want to fully retreat. Approaching your inbox is as simple as that. Just set a timer for twenty minutes and do what you can. Are you behind on a bunch of messages? Pick the most urgent and respond until time’s up.”

“It’s like the Pomodoro Technique,” he says, “except you track your progress not by what remains (the ocean never dries up!) but by what you’re able to do. When the time is up, you celebrate what you’ve done, instead of dwelling on what remains. You’re not trying to win the war. You’re just doing what you can to be as thorough as humanly possible – while still being human.”

“You can’t do everything, but you can do something,” says the author. “Do that thing and hold your head high.”

I loved this simple suggestion…especially because I had already been using a timer (for years) to set sustainable limits on the amount of time I spend on my various work tasks in a day. But for some odd reason, I never felt I could do that with e-mail! Twenty minutes didn’t seem like enough time to get anything of significance accomplished.

I was wrong.

Setting a timer for twenty minutes of working in my inbox forced me to be both strategic and focused on which e-mails I was going to tackle…even if that meant I would only read and answer one or two important e-mails that day.

And get this: I was also, oddly enough, strangely relaxed. Why?

Because although opening up my inbox still felt like falling into a vortex, now it was one that I knew I could safely (and honourably) leave again, once the timer went off after twenty minutes…with my head held high, knowing I’d done my very best in that time.

I also loved another of Guillebeau’s ideas about dealing with an overflowing inbox, that I thought, at first, was rather…revolutionary.

“Every January, I instituted a new “e-mail bankruptcy” practice, where I simply archived everything I’d missed from the previous year. If I still needed access to something later, it was just a search away. In the meantime, I could move forward with less angst. At first it was painful. I was giving up on lots of unanswered messages! But the pain was temporary, because once the inbox was empty, I was able to be responsive to newer messages – at least for awhile.”

Out with the old; in with the new!

I have not tried that radical suggestion myself…yet 🙂

How about you?

Are you stressed out by too much e-mail? Do you have an effective strategy for dealing with the steady flow of e-mails coming into your in-box? Or is other stuff causing you to feel overwhelmed…enough so, that you are avoiding doing anything to deal with it?

One twenty-minute chunk at a time 🙂

Maryanne Pope is the author of “A Widow’s Awakening.” She also writes screenplays, playscripts & blogs. Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Co-Founder of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. To receive her blog, “Weekly Words of Wisdom,” please subscribe here. And be sure to visit our PinkGazelleCards Etsy shop.