What to do when you have “too much to do”

June 11, 2008

You know that ‘having too much to do’ makes you feel overwhelmed and ‘stresses you out’. Here’s what goes on in your body when you are overwhelmed (I wanted to tell you because it might help you to find better solutions to your challenges.)

Your frontal lobe (the part of your brain that uses reason and has problem solving capacity) is only capable of operating on up to seven processes at a time. When you have more than that number of ‘to do’ items running through your head, your thoughts and attentional resources will be diverted away from your frontal lobe towards the parts of your brain that are more emotionally based.

These parts of your brain put you more in a state of alert – they set you up to take things personally, to obsess about situations that make you feel angry or upset; they narrow your ability to think of effective solutions and keep you trying hard at solutions that don’t work well.

When you persistently have thoughts that create a state of alert, here’s just some of what will happen in your body: Surges of adrenaline will dampen the networks of cells sending out serotonin (making you feel more depressed and lethargic), throw off the insulin cycle that creates your feeling of energy; interfere with your ability to relax and have your cells regenerate, etc. Your blood will become more acidic than alkaline, setting you up to be less protected against bacteria and viruses, etc. The overall effect is to dampen your immune system - this is how stressful thoughts can begin to create stress related conditions in your body.*

If you are interested in taking control of your own well being, preventing stress related conditions, or managing an acute or chronic health condition, come learn tips from experts at the Your Power to Heal conference this Saturday in NYC. Click here to learn more.

What you can do:

  1. Write down everything that comes racing through your mind, so that you don’t have to hold it in short term memory in your frontal lobe. From your exhaustive list, make ‘buckets’ of A, B, C, etc priority items, then go back and rearrange your list into things that must be done now, later, etc. Put ‘ticklers’ into your schedule for when you will do things that are not priorities for today. Remember that once you exceed seven items to process you are no longer making use of your frontal lobe (meaning you will be acting out of emotion and setting in motion stress conditions)!
  2. Make a dedicated time to become clear about what your business model is or what will make you the most effective in your role. Once you are clear about your optimal use of time, make that the new filter through which you pass each new decision. Own the value of your time, push back respectfully on people who are asking for your time if it is not in the service of what you truly want and what will bring you real fulfillment. (see my blog entitled Clarity is your best time management tool for more details).
  3. Think about what experiences you most want to have each day (i.e., feel connected to others; feel at peace; feel accomplished, etc) This way, even if you have a lot of work to do, you can be present and turn the situation into one which helps you to experience more of what you want. i.e., How can you make more of a connection with colleagues/clients while doing the work? How can you enjoy more of a feeling of accomplishment from the contribution you are making? How can you use breathing techniques to help you feel centered and focused as you are getting the work done (I’ll write more about these techniques in future blogs, stay tuned). This way, you are getting things you want even as you are doing all you have to do.

(*My thanks to neuroscientist Sonia Sequiera, Ph.D. for helping me understand this important information)

Posted by sharon | Filed Under blog 

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