One Thing at a Time

So much stuff. Where do you start?

Yesterday's client was stuck in this web. She'd been trying to work on her own. She'd see all the stuff and it would make her crash and give up.

So, when we worked on the phone yesterday, I had her pick just one area. She decided to work on the stack of papers on her desk. I had her go through one paper at a time. A few minutes into it, she was weary and said there was so much stuff in her home that it would take three years to clutter bust.

This is common. Instead of focusing on one thing, which is doable for everyone, she saw all the decisions she would end up having to make, and it was too much and she shut down.

I said that if she had five errands to do outside her home, she would go to one place at a time. She'd take care of one thing, and then move on to the next. If she tried to go to all the places at once, she would pull her car to the side of the road and cry.

She got it and went back to deciding on one thing at a time on her desk. Her mind was quiet again. We finished the stack of papers.

It's amazing how good we are at decision making when we consider only one thing at a time. We have a tendency to try and multi-task, but there's a lot of research which shows that trying to do a lot at once makes us less productive and stressed. One thing at a time fits us, it's meditative, we end up getting things done, and when we're finished it leaves us feeling confident.