I am currently working on multiple projects, and by multiple I cannot even begin to list all of them. I have knitting projects, yard projects, DIY projects in the house, organizational projects, writing projects and probably some things I left out. So many things I want to do, and so little time and money to do them. Sometimes, like this morning, I get overwhelmed trying to decide what I need to do today. That’s when I try to take into account some advice I read on a website called Fly Lady, a woman dedicated to helping people keeping people from having CHAOS – Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome. Both the acronym and the actual word could apply to me. Right now they apply to my brain. All these ideas floating around mixed with To-Do lists make it hard to focus and be productive on what “needs” doing instead of what I “want” to do. Since it is my birthday this weekend, I have decided to try and do a little of both by trying to get some things off my To-Do list as well as get started on a few things I want to do.
I have discovered that it helps me to be less overwhelmed if I look at things in bite-sized portions. For instance, I have a stack of diskettes…you know those things that came after floppy disks but before “The Cloud”. They are taking up space, which is limited at my house, and hard to access. Some of the information needs to be deleted because it is no longer relevant or there are redundant copies. The files are also all mixed together randomly. So, my bite-size today is just copying all of the files over to my computer hard drive and disposing of the diskettes. I can organize another day. While the files are copying, I am writing my blog post, which is, by the way, about copying the disks. That gets two things off of my list and makes me feel energized to tackle the main thing I need to do today…revise an article for submission.
See, the article submission is a scary thing to contemplate, so I have been procrastinating heavily. However, I made myself do bite-sized parts over the last few weeks…okay months. I now have a rough draft, and it is time to dig in and finish it, but I wouldn’t have gotten to today without the bite-sized tasks.
God has a similar plan for when things get overwhelming. When the Israelites left Egypt for the Promised Land, God gave them each day’s plan at the beginning of the day, complete with the food needed for that day, no more, no less. The Bible also says, “34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34).
Lately things have piled up on me and made me feel like curling up on the couch instead of doing what needs to be done. It is on these days when I need to take things bite-sized, one day at a time, one task at a time.
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You may have written this almost two years ago but it sure hit the bullseye today. I also have many unfinished and planned projects, from a house to getting my cats spayed and the dog bathed. Finishing these tasks seem overwhelming at times because I’m always looking at the whole thing! I need to remember that it is like eating an elephant…one bite at a time…