Pounding out the List

What to do when you’re swamped and engaged in avoidance behaviors:

1. Realize you’re depressed about it.
2. Decide that you’re not going to let an “it” determine your emotions.
3. Organize all tasks into general categories. (e.g. Charity, Marketing, Health)
4. Prioritize the categories according to your values. (e.g. The poor and suffering first. Then your clients. Then things that affect your family. Then the other things.). Your values may differ. This is how we do it.
5. Start with the first category, and do the thing that’s quickest to complete. Then the next quickest (Just like Ramsey’s snowball method of paying off your debt).
6. When that category is done, move through the next, and so on.

More things will be added to the list as you work. This is normal. Aside from emergencies, don’t backtrack. You’ll restart the categories soon enough. Now being swamped doesn’t mean being stuck in the swamp. If you never stop having things to do, but are doing them, you’ve reached normalcy for someone who works.

7. And on the seventh day, he rested from his labours.