I’m too busy!

I got so much to do. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t do everything!

Ok, stop right there my friend.

As a coach and a mentor, I’ve heard these phrases so many times.

“Scotty I’m too busy, I can’t get it all done! What do I do? How do I make choices?” 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now, you’re not alone.

So many successful, high achieving people are feeling stressed about their time and about how they can get everything done. I was one of them!

Today I’m sharing 3 simple tips with you that can have a huge impact on how much you get done, how much you achieve, and how you feel while you’re doing it.

But before we get to the tips; I’ve got good news and bad news. 

I’m going to go with the bad news first….and you’re not going to like it.

The bad news is this –

My belief after doing this for 30 years around the world with literally hundreds of thousands of people is that you simply can’t do everything. 

Now you’re like, “Whoa, what? I thought you were gonna help me get it all done!?”

Nope. My friend, it’s not humanly possible to read every book on the planet, do every workout at the gym and be friends with everyone and achieve every single thing you want to do. 

Sometimes I meet people on this personal development journey and they’re trying to do 47 things at once. But the truth is, you can’t do everything.

Now, for the good news.

It’s something I’ve discovered after travelling the world 25 times and it is that you literally can do anything. 

I mean you can do anything. 

You’ve probably already done some amazing and extraordinary things in your life, so you know you can do anything. You just can’t do everything right now at one time. 

Now you might be thinking, “Well great, Scotty, but what does that mean to me? How do I stop being so stressed, so busy and so overwhelmed right now?”

Here are those 3 simple tips I promised to help you feel better and get more done. You can start using them straight away!

Tip #1 – Really understand that time is your most important resource

One of the myths people live with is thinking that as they become more successful, get older or make more money, that there’s going to be more time. 

> When I get a personal assistant

> When I get a bigger team

> When the kids leave for high school or university

They think when those things happen, there will be more time. 

But there won’t be.

There are 168 hours in a week and 52 weeks in a year. 168 x 52 = 8736 hours a year.

That’s what we get. 

So my first tip, my coaching for you is, do you really appreciate and respect the time you have right now? 

If you really did think of time as one of your most important resources, right up there with oxygen and water, how precious would you treat it?

 How vigilant and diligent would you be with where you allocate it and what you do with it? 

I’m not saying you should be working 24/7. I like a midday nap along with the best Europeans!

What I’m saying is, if you believe time is genuinely one of your most important resources (and it is!) how would you treat it? How would you respect it? How would you systematise it? How would you prioritise it?

Really start to appreciate there will never be more time and maybe start treating it differently, with more respect, not just frittering it away.

Tip #2 – Do Less

This tip sounds counterintuitive, right? My coaching for you is I want you to do less, not more. 

“What are you talking about Scotty? I came here because I’m overwhelmed – I need to get more done!”

Here’s what I mean by doing less.

Unless you’re the president, or the Dalai Lama I’m telling you respectfully right now, you don’t have 57 things every day to do that are vitally important. 

You just don’t. 

If you focus on five to seven key decisions, key actions and key results every day, I’m telling you, you’d end the day with a very different sense of fulfilment and achievement having focused on those five to seven things and not the 52. 

Doing less means really focusing in on those key five to seven things – not the 52 things that you think are important. 

Tip #3 – Get a system to prioritise decision making

You can’t do everything but you can do anything. What you need is a system for making decisions, a system for making choices between important  goals / outcomes to decide which one to go after.  

So what is your system? Your system is based on your core values. 

What are the MOST important things to you?

You might say the things you value the most are Health, Family, Travel, Education and God.

So there’s your system for how to make choices and prioritise how you spend your time.

Or maybe your most important values are Cleanliness, Order, Work and Contribution.

Great! Make a decision about what really is a priority for today based on those values. Using a system will quickly reduce those 52 ‘important’ things on your list to 5 -7 real priorities. 

There you have it, my three quick coaching tips on how to get out of overwhelm and get off the wheel of being busy.

Has this been valuable to you? I’d love to hear more about how you plan to implement these tips in your life. Leave me a comment below! 

Like this post? You might also like . . .