I even come home and I’m still focused on work. I’m constantly thinking about it. I can’t seem to get anything done. I’m always being interrupted. I have dinner with work on my mind. I can’t relax or even fall asleep. It’s just a disaster!Stop..
Okay, stop.I took a time management course, but it didn’t help me at all. I’m actually doing worse! I’m giving up!Don’t give up. The answer is in the paragraph below.
Time cannot be controlled. No matter how much we want to. We can’t find an extra hour or ten hours in our lives. No matter how we manage our time, there will always be tasks left undone. Most managers have far more tasks in this life than they can handle. So what should we do?
You know why, even when you’re at home, you think about work? Because you left something unfinished at the office that you wish had been done. Something bothersome, something significant, something important. You were taught in time management courses to handle small tasks quickly, right? But that leaves that very task, the one that haunts your thoughts, undone.
So what do you need to do to stop being a hamster on a wheel? You just need to do one thing — that one task. That’s it! People are not capable of multitasking. They can only focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking and switching between tasks without losing efficiency is a myth. So, it’s not even worth thinking about anything else if you have a task that is unpleasant, annoying, but very important that needs to be done. Just do it and forget about it. Then you can think about everything else.
Take a piece of paper. Write down all the tasks you want to accomplish. There’s no need to overthink or perfect the list—it’s okay to add to and revise it later. Have you written your list? Now, choose that one task. The one that has the highest priority. The one that will keep you awake at night, tossing and turning in bed. The most unpleasant and the most challenging one. Flip the paper over and write that task on the clean side.
That’s it. You have no other tasks except for this one. Have you done it? Turn the page and choose the next task. If necessary, turn off your phone and close Skype. Let “England wait.” You are focusing on one single, but the most important task. The one that needs to be done here and now. Everything else is unimportant for the time being.
You won’t have less work, no. You’ll feel a sense of freedom and strength, which will help you tackle the easier and less important tasks more quickly. Some of them will simply become irrelevant, and for others, you’ll find a way to delegate the work. Glide, soar, do one thing at a time, and you’ll start to enjoy life.