Do you have days when there are just too many distracting demands, all urgent? You realize you are jumping from one to another and essentially, not getting anywhere. We all have days like this. During Covid, it seemed there were many months like this. What is required to get through it is to prioritize, compartmentalize and focus.Start with prioritizing. What are the top 3 things you are maximizing for? Perhaps it is Sales, profits and working capital/cash. The old saying ‘cash is king” is no joke. What is your runway? If cash is your top priority, brainstorm with your team and wise advisors about strategies to extend your liquidity. If this is number 3, then what is number one?
Spend the most time on that.
Compartmentalize: What do you have to do today or this week to address that challenge? Allocate time to do this. Stay on this for at least 2 hours. Do not allow yourself to check email, get slack messages, or anything else until you complete the task, or 2 hours. Then take a break. Take a walk. Do that with task 2. Then task 3.
Focus: Your mind is a terrible thing to let wander. It will if you let it. It is a very bad puppy that will pull at your pants leg, or pee on the carpet to divert your attention. Take that puppy for a run before you sit down to work. Or lift weights, or meditate. Prepare for the hard work at hand. Then close out all distractions and only work on this one thing for 2 hours or until the task is done.
Practice this regularly and it becomes a habit. And, a successful strategy for dealing with overwhelm.