[00:11:52] Every time you are picking three most important tasks and choosing to do them, keep affirming in your mind that you are the one who is prioritizing these tasks. You are the one who’s choosing these things. What you choose to do is completely in your hand. It’s your choice. I want you to do say this affirmation in your mind, every time you are choosing these tasks and every time you are finishing these tasks before you start your day, because doing this exercise every day will give you tremendous confidence and freedom that you can depend on yourself.

[00:12:36] You will stop feeling like, “oh, my life is going out of control. Or My life is not in my control. Those thoughts will start disappearing because every day you are proving yourself with evidence that you are making a choice and you are getting those done. There is no ounce of doubt left. If there is evidence staring right at you in front of your face.

[00:13:01] So you don’t have to depend on others to prioritize your happiness for you. You choose it. Not anybody else. It is your decision. And you wanted to do it. Just because you thought it was important. And then you will notice your feelings also improving. You’ll start feeling good every time you finish those important tasks before your day starts, you’ll feel like I’m doing this for myself.

[00:13:29] I can choose different tasks everyday and still do it. This is, this actually is very useful for those who are suffering from depression, anxiety, and feel like, they don’t feel like they can do anything. Or feel like life is out of their control. Remember you are in the driver’s seat.

[00:13:47] So you do things that makes you have happy. Pat yourself on the back and say it out loud every time you finish those tasks. It has an effect on you. Self appreciation has a huge impact on yourself. You will never realize it unless you start doing it.

[00:14:08] And in case, if you could not finish some, one of those three important tasks, don’t beat yourself up. It is okay if you make mistakes. It’s okay. Sometimes unforeseen things happen and maybe you didn’t foresee what could have gone wrong. So it’s okay. Tell yourself that is okay. I couldn’t do all of them, but I’ll do it tomorrow.

[00:14:35] If you feel that you have too much on your plate, then reduce the burden. Just pick one tasks instead of three. There’s no point beating yourself up for making mistakes, because if you already knew that you wouldn’t be able to handle it, you wouldn’t have made that decision. So we learn from our mistakes.

[00:14:56] Always treat mistakes like a teacher.

[00:15:02] And another thing you will notice is if you have picked a task, which is important to you and if you are not able to complete it and you haven’t really scoped how complex or big this task could be- then you can actually sit and divide it into smaller chunks that are doable.

[00:15:21] So instead of doing one big task, you can break it down into smaller pieces and then pick one piece everyday, maybe. So just play around with that and figure it out how you want to do it.

[00:15:41] So if you are wondering that how you can break the task. You can go about in this way, like in order for me to do this, I will have to do X, Y, and Z, or these many number of steps. Step one, we’ll take five minutes. Say to step two, will take two hours. Step three will take a 1 day. But it will give you some kind of confidence that you can do it in say maybe three days. That entire task can be completed in three days.

[00:16:14] So next time, when you do some tasks, you will notice that you can actually do that same task in a shorter amount of time. Or in a more efficient way. And you will figure those out while you are doing it. I will probably discuss that in another podcast as to how to become more efficient in your tasks, how to reduce the time taken to do a task and also produce better quality and require lesser effort.

[00:16:44] So basically you will become better and better at it. You won’t feel paralyzed like you are feeling right now.

[00:16:56] Remember, you can become better at managing your day only when you get some time to just think about your day and what you did. If you can’t recall what you did, then just start writing down what you do every day. I will actually cover that also in a different podcast as to figure out what exactly you’re spending your day. And how to track that and how to optimize that.

[00:17:23] None of us can finish everything in a day, even the best of us. Like I have completely stopped fretting about it. I have only 12 hours in a day to do my work or maybe even eight hours. And you can only do things that are most important to you on for that specific day.

[00:17:44] Rest you can do on next day. How are you going to prioritize what is important? So you have to ask yourself one simple question. What is the impact of this task? What is the outcome of this task? What am I going to get out of it?

[00:18:01] How big is the outcome? As compared to the outcomes of other things? How is outcome important to me if I do this task tomorrow? Will it reduce the outcome in any way? You can compare the outcomes of each of the tasks that you have in your hand and decide which one is most important to you. And which one will give you immediate results, something that cannot be delayed.

[00:18:33] Those things you do on one specific day. The rest of the things you can put it for the next day. One, another way you can prioritize your task is you can just write down that what will happen if I don’t do this today. And answer that question beside all the tasks that you have in your list. Then choose the one with the worst consequence and which cannot wait till tomorrow. And then do that today. Write it every day because when you are tempted to do something else, the consequence will remind you to stay focused and not get distracted. Soon it will become a habit and you don’t even have to write it. It will just happen automatically.

[00:19:18] Now, if your problem is that you have too much on your plate, like a lot of things, that you can’t humanly get possibly done in one day, then you are overworked.

[00:19:29] If it is in your workplace then you are basically doing two persons work. You need at least one more person in your team to help you. So if you’re manager is approachable, you can ask them that you need another person to do this job. Or you can ask them that if you can hire a person in your team to finish it. Because you can’t possibly get everything done if all of those tasks are important.

[00:19:58] So I’ll do a different podcast on how to automate tasks and how to delegate tasks which is specially targeted for managing the task volume. That itself would require a separate podcast of it. Because there is a lot of things to cover in it. And it has its own framework.

[00:20:17] To summarize this is what you need to do, create your task list, then prioritize the tasks based on the most important ones at the top and the most unimportant ones towards the bottom. Then choose up to not more than three tasks per day. And choose from the top of the list. Try to do that before your day starts.

[00:20:45] I’ll summarize what you need to do as part of the exercise.

[00:20:54] If you really hate the idea of even thinking about your work, especially on a weekend, then I’d suggest you go someplace nice. Like a nice cafe or a nice restaurant. Or a nice place by the lake, wherever your mood becomes better. You immediately start feeling good. Take your diary or notebook, or a notepad, a laptop or mobile, and then you will be looking forward to going to that place.

[00:21:22] So that, you can just plan your tasks. Then it will not become like -“I have to, again, plan tasks? I don’t even want to think about work today. I just want to relax”. So that kind of anxiety will not come if you are really enjoying your time in that specific place. To make things easier for you go to a nice place with your notebook and pen, then the next step would be to take a look at your task list.

[00:21:52] If you already had some things spilling over from last week, then those become your task list. If not, then look through your calendar and see what important meetings you have. And in case, if you have neither, then write down all the things you think are important to you that will come up next week.

[00:22:12] write those things down. Prepare a list. Then the next step is to prioritize the tasks using either one of these methods. So you ask yourself what will happen if I don’t do this task immediately what’s the worst outcome? And then you write down the worst outcomes. Then you prioritize the one which has the most worst outcome to the top and go in a descending order.

[00:22:44] The next method of prioritization could be you ask yourself, what is the impact of this task? What is outcome of this task and write down the outcomes of each task. What kind of benefit it will bring you? And then compare them. Then you do the ones which are very beneficial to you, put them as high priority and on the top of the list, and then arrange the list in a descending order.

[00:23:12] And the third method is to figure out which tasks are urgent or time sensitive. Can they wait till tomorrow or till next week? If not, what will happen? And then put the tasks with the highest urgency as number one, and then mark the next urgent task as number two. And then mark the other next one as number three and so on and so forth.

[00:23:37] So you can basically number the tasks in order of the rank or the importance of the task. Which ones you should do first will be number one. Whichever one you will do next will be number two and so on. And then the fourth step is choose tasks number one, and put it in your calendar on the first day of the week.

[00:24:01] The time that you’re choosing to do this task is very important. That can make or break your game. So choose a time before your work day starts. So if your office work or housework starts at 10:00 AM, try to do this task at 8:00 AM or 9:00 AM. Similarly put other tasks on the other days. And only plan for just one week.

[00:24:25] Don’t pick more than three tasks a day. I would suggest that we only pick one or maximum two. But if you want to stretch yourself, or if you have more time in the morning, then you can pick three.

[00:24:41] Then leave the remaining day for other things that’s going to come on your way. If there are too many tasks, then you have to start tracking, which one of those tasks can be automated. And which ones of those can be delegated to someone else. Now, delegation can happen to your subordinate, if you have a team. Or if you don’t have a team, then you can hire a third party to do it. The point is you pick and do what’s most important to you and delegate the other tasks that you cannot finish on your own to someone. Towards the end of every day, you may want to check what you have completed and what you have not, from your main important task list.

[00:25:23] If you picked three tasks and you couldn’t do task number three, then that will be spilled over to the next day. So you have to do task three on day two. And eventually towards the end of the week, you can see how many tasks have been have completed and how many would spill over.

[00:25:38] You have to get habituated doing this setup. You have to build a habit around it so that it’s a reflex action for you. You don’t have to think or put effort to do it every time. Because that’s the only way you will be able to manage your anxiety and that overwhelming feeling that the most important things that I had to do was not done. Or there are too many things coming on my way and things like that.

[00:26:03] The only way you can manage your overwhelm is to take the control back into your own hands. So I hope you have enjoyed this episode this chapter and please leave your review, subscribe to my channel and share it with others.

[00:26:23] Hello, beautiful people. I am Moumita here. And today. I’m going to talk about How to get things done without feeling overwhelmed. So those who don’t know me. I do podcasts on work, money, spirituality, science, and how to live a better quality of life. If you’d like to know more about my experience, et cetera, I’d suggest you click on the website link shared below. And if you like this episode, please leave a review and subscribe to my podcast and share it with others.

[00:26:58] In this episode, I’m going to talk about how to prioritize the most important tasks of the day and get those done. Instead of doing too many things, which you could have done later. And then feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to do and which ones to do first. And so many things piling up on your plate.

[00:27:15] You can’t firefight all the time and expect the situation to change. You are constantly in a state of stress and you are going through a lot of anxiety. Your cortisol levels are high in the bloodstream. You may feel life to be perennially out of control. And that is not a sustainable or a desirable state to be in.

[00:27:39]  A lot of people would say that things are not always in our control and things just show up unexpectedly. How are we in control of our situation?

[00:27:48] We forget the fact that we are the one who is making the choices what we should do. Unexpected things may happen. But how we react to that is in our control. So by definition, our life is still in our control. We just don’t realize it. Or we just don’t exercise our choices.

[00:28:11] But with conscious planning and practice, you can develop that.

[00:28:17] So ease into the process of earning back some control in your life by starting very small things, which doesn’t require much effort from your side. Do just one small, simple thing in one day that is as per your wish. Anything that you think is important to you or something very simple also, but something that you want to do.

[00:28:48] For example, if you want to start with something very small, you can say that, okay, I’m going to drink one glass of water. Every time I wake up in the morning. It’s a very simple task, right?

[00:29:00] But making it a habit and doing it every day without fail.

[00:29:05] That requires some effort and consistent practice. So the exercise of doing this is to make you feel that your life is in your control. You choosing to drink that glass of water every day is a choice that you are making. And similarly, once you get into the habit of drinking one glass of water every day, when you wake up,

[00:29:31] you can start extending that kind of choice in other aspects of your life.

[00:29:38] And now if you extend it for other important tasks, then what you can convince yourself is- “now I can get the most important things done before my day begins. And now I’m mentally at peace because I have finished what was most important to me. Now I can do whatever the day throws at me”.

[00:29:59] The point is to prioritize what is important to you and do it the first thing before your day starts. This could be at work. This could also be in personal life.

[00:30:15] Gradually you can increase the difficulty or the number of important tasks that you want to prioritize in a day. But I would suggest don’t pick more than three tasks because it is humanly not possible to prioritize more than three tasks.

[00:30:29] Then leave the remaining day for other things that’s going to come on your way. If there are too many tasks, then you have to start tracking, which one of those tasks can be automated. And which ones of those can be delegated to someone else.

[00:30:46] I’ll do a different podcast on how to automate tasks and how to delegate tasks which is specially targeted for managing the task volume.

[00:30:56] I don’t want you to beat yourself up if you fail to do more than three tasks in a day properly. Because there could be newer, important things coming up, which you have to pay attention to. And if you plan to do too many things at the same time, your plan may fail. And then you’re back to that loop of feeling guilty and beating yourself up that I am not able to finish anything.

[00:31:24] Do either one or up to three tasks as per your wish in a day, so that you can take back control of your life in your own hands.

[00:31:32] Every time you are picking three most important tasks and choosing to do them, keep affirming in your mind that you are the one who is prioritizing these tasks. You are the one who’s choosing these things. What you choose to do is completely in your hand. It’s your choice. I want you to do say this affirmation in your mind, every time you are choosing these tasks and every time you are finishing these tasks before you start your day, because doing this exercise every day will give you tremendous confidence and freedom that you can depend on yourself.

[00:32:16] You will stop feeling like, “oh, my life is going out of control. Or My life is not in my control. Those thoughts will start disappearing because every day you are proving yourself with evidence that you are making a choice and you are getting those done. There is no ounce of doubt left. If there is evidence staring right at you in front of your face.

[00:32:41] You’ll start feeling good every time you finish those important tasks before your day starts, you’ll feel like I’m doing this for myself.

[00:32:50] And in case, if you could not finish some, one of those three important tasks, don’t beat yourself up. It is okay if you make mistakes.

[00:33:01] It’s okay. Sometimes unforeseen things happen and maybe you didn’t

[00:33:07] foresee what could have gone wrong. So it’s okay. Tell yourself that is okay. I couldn’t do all of them, but I’ll do it tomorrow.

[00:33:17] Always treat mistakes like a teacher.

[00:33:21]  Another thing you will notice is if you have picked a task, which is important to you and if you are not able to complete it and you haven’t really scoped how complex or big this task could be- then you can actually divide it into smaller chunks that are doable.

[00:33:38] So next time, when you do some tasks, you will notice that you can actually do that same task in a shorter amount of time. Or in a more efficient way. And you will figure those out while you are doing it. I will probably discuss that in another podcast as to how to become more efficient in your tasks, how to reduce the time taken to do a task and also produce better quality and require lesser effort.

[00:34:09] Remember, you can become better at managing your day only when you get some time to just think about your day and what you did. If you can’t recall what you did, then just start writing down what you do every day. I will cover that also in a different podcast to figure out what exactly you’re spending your day.

[00:34:32] And how to track that and how to optimize that.

[00:34:36] None of us can finish everything in a day, even the best of us.

[00:34:39] How are you going to prioritize what is important? So you have to ask yourself one simple question. What is the impact of this task? What is the outcome of this task? What am I going to get out of it?

[00:34:54] How big is the outcome? As compared to the outcomes of other things? How is outcome important to me if I do this task tomorrow? Will it reduce the outcome in any way? You can compare the outcomes of each of the tasks that you have in your hand and decide which one is most important to you. And which one will give you immediate results, something that cannot be delayed.

[00:35:27] Those things you do on one specific day. The rest of the things you can put it for the next day.

[00:35:36] Now, if your problem is that you have too much on your plate, like a lot of things, that you can’t humanly get possibly done in one day, then you are overworked.

[00:35:48] If it is in your workplace then you are basically doing two persons work. You need at least one more person in your team to help you.

[00:35:58] To summarize this is what you need to do, create your task list, then prioritize the tasks based on the most important ones at the top and the most unimportant ones towards the bottom. Then choose up to not more than three tasks per day. And choose from the top of the list. Try to do that before your day starts. Then leave the remaining day for other things that’s going to come on your way. If there are too many tasks, then you have to start tracking, which one of those tasks can be automated. And which ones of those can be delegated to someone else.

[00:36:39] So I hope you have enjoyed this episode and please leave your review, subscribe to my channel and share it with others.

[00:36:48] audiogram

[00:36:49] If you are constantly overwhelmed on a daily basis, then something in your lifestyle needs to change.

[00:36:55] So ease into the process of earning back some control in your life by starting very small things.

[00:37:03] Create your task list. Then prioritize the tasks based on the most important ones at the top and the most unimportant ones towards the bottom. Then choose up to not more than three tasks per day from the top of the list. Try to do that before your day starts. Then leave the remaining day for other things that’s going to come on your way. Remember that your task list may not be finished in a day.