How to Get Back On Track When the Wheels Come Off.
Learn more about the How To Get Back On Track Course here.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty people face when managing their work is not creating a system or building processes. It’s maintaining those systems and processes when they become overloaded by work and personal commitments.
In this week’s episode, I’m sharing a few ideas that have helped me regain control over the years when things have become a little bit frazzled, and the work coming in is greater than the amount of work getting done.
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Script | 436
Hello, and welcome to episode 436 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.
You may have read the books, taken the courses and watched the YouTube videos. You know what’s needed to create a way to manage your workload, and you have all the tools to contain everything.
Then, something goes wrong. A major client threatens to go to a competitor, your boss decides to change your responsibilities, or your son or daughter gets sick, and you need to stay at home for a couple of days while they recover, and you have to start cancelling meetings and postponing deadlines.
It happens to all of us from time to time. The stress this creates just adds to the sense of overwhelm and leaves us not knowing which way to turn.
Suddenly, our system and processes no longer seem to work, and we’re running around in circles, not knowing which way to turn.
And yet, it’s times like these that our systems are built for.
This week I launched a brand-new course called How to Get Back on Track, and the inspiration for developing this course was my coaching clients.
My clients come to me when they are stuck and don’t know how to get out and back on track. And over the years, I’ve developed a few ideas that have helped hundreds of my clients get back on track quickly and without adding more stress or hours to their already busy schedules.
The first thing to do when you find yourself off track, so to speak, is to stop.
Yes, I know that seems to be the last thing you should do, but there is an old saying that goes, “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”
And it’s true.
Running around in circles not knowing what you should work on means nothing is getting done. The pile of work is growing, and all you are doing is looking at a growing list of things to do, and nothing is happening.
Stopping gives you time to look at everything coming in and make a decision about what needs your attention right now.
You can only give one thing your attention at a time. If you’ve hundreds of unread emails and messages sitting in your inbox, several quotes to get out, and a boss who wants you to send her a list of all the quotes in play today, you’re not going to be able to do all of those things at the same time.
You are going to need to decide which one deserves your attention right now.
Stopping allows your brain to slow down for a moment to look at what you have and to decide objectively what you should begin with.
Often we will pick the easiest thing because that gives us a sense of progress, yet the easiest thing is likely to be the least important. (Unless you’re lucky.)
Now, when I say stop, I don’t mean stop for long. All you need is five to ten minutes where you stop, look at what’s on your list of things to do and make a decision about what you will work on for the next hour or two.
Ultimately, what matters is what you can do today to begin reducing the list. And that will depend on how many meetings and appointments you have today.
There’s an interesting human behavioural instinct that comes into play when we are faced with declining an invitation from someone.
There’s the easy way out; that’s to say, “Yes, I can meet with you.”, even though we know the best thing to do is to say no and offer an alternative time next week.
Or the alternative is to say, unfortunately, I’m very busy this week; could we meet next week instead?
The “fear” of having to negotiate with someone overcomes the common-sense answer of “no, not this week”.
So we add more commitments to an already full schedule. Now you have to move some other things around, allowing your emails and messages to continue to grow; after all, you’ve got no time for dealing with that, but you’d better keep checking them to see if anything important or urgent is in there. (As if you’ve got time to deal with it if there is)
Oh, and we are so good at justifying these decisions to ourselves.
We’ll tell ourselves that we had no choice. It’s my boss. I have to do everything they ask of me, don’t I? Or it’s an important customer. I can’t tell them I can meet with them next week. I have to meet them today!
And those reasons may be valid. But have you ever tried to negotiate with any of these people, or are these reasons just reasons you made up with no evidence as to their truth?
Stopping and stepping back gives you some space to think these decisions through and to better prioritise what you will do next.
Strangely, one of the most effective ways to deal with this situation I’ve found is to grab Louis’s lead and go out for a walk. We usually walk for 45 to 60 minutes, and it’s just him, sniffing the trees and lamp posts, and me thinking through the pile of work I have to get done and mentally mapping out what I will do and when I will do it.
I’m not suggesting you go out and buy yourself a dog, but the idea is you get away from your workspace for a time, go for a walk outside and mentally map out what you will do and when.
In evolutionary terms, this is how humans have historically done their thinking. We are designed for it.
When we were living in caves, and there were threats to our lives everywhere, we had to make decisions about escaping the fast-approaching predator while on the move. (Often while moving very fast)
That instinct has not left us. So, if you want to make better decisions, get outside and move.
To give you something from the How to Get Back on Track course, here is a checklist-type procedure you can follow. It’s designed to quickly get you back on track and help you focus on what matters this week.
The first is to ask: What are my most important commitments this week?
This could be meetings, appointments or an impending deadline. All you want to know is what these commitments are for this week. Do not worry about next week. You can reassess those later. All you need to know is what your critical commitments and deadlines are for this week.
Everything else should be postponed. For that, you will need to send out some messages apologising and explaining that you are not going to be able to make it this week. More on that in a moment.
Next: Are your next 7 days’ tasks realistic? This means removing anything that is not critical this week. This will likely need some compromise, but the goal here is to reduce your to-do list so that what remains are only the tasks that will have to be done this week.
Hint: most things do not need to be done this week. For example, if your boss has asked you to send them a report by the end of the week, a quick message or conversation with your boss could have that report delayed until Tuesday next week.
Then: Have the people affected by delays been informed or updated? Now, in the course, I have given you a list of suggested scripts you can use, but when you put requesting extensions to deadlines as a separate task, you will tend to look at it less personally and more objectively.
I remember back in my 20s when I abused my credit cards. There were a few months when I was unable to pay my cards, and I remember my bank manager telling me all I had to do was call the bank and tell them you were going to be late and you’d be fine as long as you kept your promise to pay.
And he was right. It was the times I tried to hide from any repayments that got me into trouble. Get ahead of it. Ask for an extension or a meeting postponement upfront. What’s the worst that can happen?
The worst is they refuse your request for an extension. That’s unlikely, though.
Finally, when the day starts, the only thing that matters is what you do today. So: Do you have a realistic day today?
Have you reduced your meetings to the minimum, and are you clear on what tasks must be done today?
I know asking for extensions and to be excused from meetings is hard. But what’s the alternative?
You see, the issue is not the amount of work you have to do. That’s always going to be more than you can do. The problem is time, or rather, that time is fixed, and there’s nothing you can do to change that.
All you have control over is what you do today. You can choose that.
Ultimately, what you are doing is buying yourself time to get back on top of things.
Looking for new apps or changing the way you organise your notes won’t help you when you’ve become overwhelmed. What will help you is to step back, look at what’s on your plate and decide what you need to eliminate.
That’s the hard part. Letting go of things that are not serving you.
I mentioned in a recent blog post that the one thing that destroys someone’s career is an inability to manage their time as their responsibilities grow. It’s rarely because they don’t work hard enough or are lazy.
After all, if you don’t work hard or are lazy, it’s unlikely you’ll get promoted.
With each promotion, you take on new responsibilities and the scope of your work widens. Yet, you don’t get more time when you’re promoted. That stays the same.
To maintain your trajectory, managing your workload will be an essential skill. There will be times when everything seems to be happening all at once; we all go through those phases. Having a strategy that helps you stay on track is a key skill that will keep you moving forward.
If you want to learn more about this brand-new course, a course I feel is the missing piece in my course library, then I will put a link in the show notes where you can learn more.
Over the last eight years, I produced courses around systems and strategies to help you organise your work; the piece I realised that was missing is what you can do when things break down. After all, even Rolls-Royces break down from time to time.
Even the best systems have a breaking point, and with the amount of work seemingly increasing each month, having a procedure to help you through those busy times will ensure that you won’t be the one left at the side of the road wondering what to do.
Thank you for listening, and I wish you all a very, very productive week.