When Things Fall Apart.

And how to get quickly get back on track.

It’s often when you are under the most pressure that the systems and tools you rely on start to break down. Your inboxes fill up, you ignore your task list, and then you cannot decide where to start.

Then it’s tempting to blame those systems and tools, yet the problem is likely to be simpler than that.

For the last eight years, I’ve been creating courses and programmes to help people become better at managing their time and workload and organising their files and notes.

These are important first steps if you want to become productive and have more time for the things you want to spend time on.

However, as I was refreshing my content this summer, I noticed a gap in what I offer. That gap is around what happens when things break down, and you become swamped and overwhelmed by everything coming at you.

It’s when you are under pressure that systems can stop working at the precise moment you need them to work effectively.

When this happens, it can be easy to give up or blame the tools and systems you are using, which makes it tempting to look for another productivity app or to watch more YouTube videos on productivity setups.

Yet, often the reason you find yourself overwhelmed and stuck is that you have reached your natural capacity. This is nothing to be ashamed of. We all have a capacity, and most of us reach that capacity frequently.

You could be running a team of nine people at work, have two kids and a spouse at home, attending night school and caring for elderly parents. That’s not an app or productivity system issue; it’s a capacity issue.

All you need is one emergency in one or more of these areas of your life for any system to break down.

This is why I have put together a brand new course called How To Get Back On Track. The course’s purpose is to show you how to quickly recover when things have become swamped and overwhelming.

The course is divided into four main chapters: The Quick Reset, Stop and Assess, Rebuild a Realistic Week and Stay in Control.

The Quick Reset chapter is your place to go whenever you feel stressed out and overwhelmed. It will calmly take you through the exact steps to take to quickly regain control of your inboxes and prioritise what matters.

The remaining chapters will help you reduce the chances of ending up in the same situation again, and alert you earlier when things are getting close to breaking.

Often we become swamped because new commitments come in that grow far larger than originally expected, yet our current commitments remain in place. Sometimes we need to go back and look at what we are committed to and eliminate those that no longer serve our purpose.

It can often be the case that we need to put on hold things we want to spend time on while we get everything else back under control. It’s what I call a “temporary hold” while we clear the decks.

This course will help you decide what needs your attention now, what can wait and what needs to be removed so that you can rebuild a week you can realistically manage.

And then there are the times we “fall off the wagon”. When we stop running our systems and processes, suddenly our inboxes are full, and our task lists become full of important tasks, out-of-date ones and tasks we completed a long time ago.

The Get Back On Track course will help you quickly get ‘back on the wagon’ without having to reset everything.

I’ve intentionally kept things short and to the point. You’re already feeling under pressure; the last thing you need is another long course teaching you things you already know.

The Quick Reset chapter will take you a little under 20 minutes to watch. Yet those 20 minutes will help to refocus you on what matters and get you restarted with purpose.

Then it will take you around 40 minutes to complete the rest of the course, but only when you are ready.

I’ve also included five scripts you can use to postpone meetings, ask for an extension to a deadline, or apologise for missing one so you do not have to think about what to write.

You can learn more and join the course here.

Join before midnight (Pacific Standard Time) on Friday 16th October 2026, and use the code: getback26 to get the course for $65, saving $30 on the normal $95.00 price.

PS. If you are a Productivity Academy member, this course is now a part of your private course library.