| 01 July 2009
Suffering from Information Overload??!!
One of our biggest challenges today is that there is too much information coming at us all the time - Too many emails, too many messages, advertisements, and things to think about. Trying to manage all this leads to stress, frustration, overwhelm and burnout. We try to keep up with information and tasks related to taxes, kids, jobs, health, relationships, money, bills, etc, etc. It's easy to fall behind or go crazy trying to do it all. The result of living this way is that we often get sidetracked from what is really important to us and end up spending our precious time and energy chasing and doing things that don't really matter. Years can go by without ever having written that book or learned to play the guitar or spending time on what you're truly passionate about. We get sucked up in the trivia and it becomes our lives.
Here is a simple and powerful process to get past all of that and create the life you really want.
1) Organize your thinking so that you have only 3 - 4 categories at any one level of organization. It's very difficult for the human mind to hold more than 3 - 4 things in it at any one time. For example, organize your life into 4 simple categories: 1) Health, 2) Relationships, 3) Life's Work, and 4) Finances. Thus, instead of having dozens of things to take care of, you now only have 4 things to manage. If you want more refinement, you can subdivide each of these into no more than 3 - 4 categories. It could look like this:
Health - a) Physical, b) Mental/Emotional, c) Spiritual
Relationships - a) Significant Other, b) Family, c) Friends
Life's Work - a) Career, b) Hobbies, c) Recreation
Finances - a) Money, b) Possessions, c) Legal documents
You can create whatever categories suit your life the best. Just limit the categories to 3 - 4 max at each level of organization. This makes it much easier to keep track of the important things in your life. On a zero to 10 scale, rate your current level of satisfaction in each category.
2) Make specific goals and action plans for each important category.
a) Create a clear compelling vision for your ideal outcomes in each category.
b) Turn the vision into specific weekly goals with ordered action steps and time lines for achieving them.
c) Schedule the action steps into your weekly calendar.
3) Stick to you calendar and work the plan. It may take a few weeks to find a schedule that suits you best and gives attention to the most important things, but stick with it. It will help you tremendously. You don't have to get everything done in order to succeed. You only need focus on the 20% of things that will give you 80% of the results you want. The rest you can delegate. For each item that comes in front of you,ask, "How much will this directly help me achieve my written goals this week?" If the answer is little to none, then discard or file for later use. This will help you weed out all the things that aren't most important for the step you are on.
4) Review and revise regularly. Review the plan each week and revise as necessary. Learn what works well and where you got caught up. Revise the plan and go at it again next week in a better way.
Most people take more time to plan a vacation than they do to plan their lives. If you will take some time to focus on what you really want in the important areas of your life, create a written plan, and then work the plan, you can create the life you really want instead of drowning in things that distract you. Remember, you can have anything you want, but not everything you want. The first step is to create a clear, compelling vision and plan and let the transformation begin. What's your life worth to you? Do this first and everything else will be easier.
If you want help with this, I teach group and individual classes on the above process.
For more information, please contact me directly.