Overwhelm: How to Break Your Life Down into Manageable Parts

Do you feel like you’re going non-stop 24/7, from the moment you awaken to the time you eventually place your head on your pillow? Do you wonder how you’re going to get everything done on your “to-do” list? If you’re like most of us, you’re probably in overwhelm. Some of us experience overwhelm in our personal lives, some in our professional lives, some in both.

In terms of our personal lives, we have our homes, our friends, our family, and ourselves–all having countless demands on our resources of time and energy, both physical and mental. We have homes to keep clean and organized. We have food to buy, cook, serve, and clean up after making. We have family and friends who put pressure on us to fulfill their needs. And then we have ourselves. We need to take care of our emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical needs to be happy, healthy beings. This may involve exercise, education, connection, introspection, hobbies, and many more areas of interest.

On the professional end, if we are self-employed, often the office door never shuts. We have client needs to fulfill, marketing, administration, planning, organizing, and the never-ending emails to answer! If we are employed, we have bosses, coworkers, customers, vendors–all putting demands on our time.

All of this leads to overwhelm, and ultimately stress. And the activities that are causing us to feel overwhelmed suffer when we are stressed. We are tired, irritable, unfocused, unproductive, and basically not able to play at 100%. So what’s the solution? Is there a way out of overwhelm?

One of the suggestions I offer with my e-guide, Your Life in Balance, is creating your own Daily Target for Life, or wheel of life as it’s also referred to.

A wheel of life will look different for each person, but the concept is always the same. Start by drawing a circle on a piece of paper, or do it on your computer. Next make a list of all the areas that are causing you to feel overwhelmed. The areas you choose are up to you.

If you have difficulty figuring out where your time is going, you might want to keep a time log for one week. This can be a real eye-opener. Create a chart in Word or Excel and break the columns into seven days and the rows into one hour segments. Keep it with you for a week, then develop your list of life areas.

Let’s look at what might go in a typical wheel of life:

• work/business
• health
• home
• relationships (family, friends, partner)
• personal growth/education
• spirituality
• play (hobbies, vacations)

Once you’ve produced your list, look back at your time log and see how much time is going into each area. Then create a pie chart in your wheel based on how much time you spend in each segment of your life. Take some time reviewing this to see if it’s how you want your life to be. You may discover that you spend far more time at work than with your family. Or you’re not spending any time on your personal interests and playing. This Wheel of Life gives you the opportunity to take some time out of overwhelm and really see how you are spending every precious minute. Now, you might want to draw a second wheel that represents how you would like your life to be. This wheel may be more balanced than the first or at least more how you would like it to be.

With this new realization, you can feel more in control of how you spend your limited resources of time and energy and hopefully banish overwhelm from your life for good!

Self-coach your way past overwhelm and into satisfied living. David Bohl is offering his 3-part ebook series, The Happiness Trilogy, at a special discounted rate.

Learn more at: http://www.slowdownfast.com/ebooks.html

Thanks to Energies of Creation for including this post in the Carnival of Creative Growth.

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