jennytg3;69983 said:
I too, find myself unable to move past looking at all my lists and becoming overwhelmed and guilt-ridden. I've been trying to successfully implement GTD for the last couple of years. As soon as I do a huge collection and processing phase and then look at all my lists, I freak out at all the overdue and uncompleted items and I don't want to look at my lists anymore.
I liked the quote - a pint can't hold a quart - but how do you decide how much you can actually accomplish in a day and then feel good about it? I'm self-employed so most days I leave my desk feeling like I should have done more - should have been more focused, billed more, surfed the internet less.
- Jenny
Jenny,
There's a very real source of the guilt and overwhelm that you feel when looking at those lists, but it's not (at least primarily) about having too much to do. There's always going to be more to do than you can do (I had a hard time digesting that one myself). It's the automatic price you pay for breaking agreements that you made with yourself.
Are you sure that your inventory 100% complete or are you still holding on to some things in your head because your lists are already so long that you don't want to make them even bigger? If you're filing anything in your head, you're creating stress and grief that's far more powerful than long lists. You can't keep and renegotiate agreements that you don't remember you made.
When you really see 100% of what you've committed to at a subconscious level, those negative emotions can hit you full force (I've been there). There's no way you can get it all done! But once you can actually see these agreements, you can objectively evaluate and renegotiate them. Renegotiating includes pending some of them to a future time and deleting what no longer provides value. That's a key thing to do especially as a self-employed person. You do not have the luxury of spending time on projects that add little or no value, no matter how good the initial idea may have been at the time. The weekly review is a key time for renegotiating your agreements, but you need to do this as often as you feel you need.
Grief also stems from making poor choices about how you are spending your time. For example, if you know you should be working on your strategic plan and you're not doing it, or if you should be exercising and you're not doing it, welcome to grief. But how do you know you're making the best choice? First you have to trust that your inventory of work is complete and current. Then you have to trust your conscience, your intuition, your inspiration and your gut for guidance.
I wish I could precisely answer your question about how much work you can handle in a day or a week, but each person has to find out the answer for themselves and it takes years to truly find that sense of balance. If you're not overwhelmed by the number of commitments you've made, you're not letting mission-critical work fall through the cracks and you're feeling good about the action decisions you make, you're in the productivity zone. If you're not, be honest with yourself about why and take action to bootstrap yourself back into the zone.
At the onset, I suggest you move most of the projects that don't have fixed deadlines (do it by this non-negotiable date or it dies) or ongoing consequences (for example, your homeowners association is fining you daily for a covenant violation) to your Someday/Maybe list and delete the current actions for those projects from your action lists. Once they are at a manageable size, focus your attention on the mission-critical and enriching work that you've defined and see how you feel at your next weekly review.
Good luck!
-Luke
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