Managing huge amounts of work, never getting overwhelmed by sheer amount again and getting over procrastination!

Managing huge amounts of work, never getting overwhelmed by sheer amount again and getting over procrastination! -Tips on managing your time and becoming massively productive

Do you know that feeling when you just cant seem to even get started? When there is so much to do that you dont even know where to start? And even if you know what exactly youre supposed to do, you keep pushing it away to the next day, the next week and eventually sometimes you never start?

I think we all have had our fair share of procrastination.

a short story of mine

I remember back in my highschool time (gymnasium) when I would literally never do my homework. It wasnt even that much work, but I just never created a habit to do so. Eventually I would loose grip of most subjects and had to learn everything 1 week prior to an exam.

 Dont get me wrong, its important we have room for our hobbies and that we relax at times. But sometimes, we just need to get things done. It actually makes us feel much better when we get our things done and makes our freetime much more valuable. We appreciate the time that we can just relax much more.

Sometimes its hard to understand why we should even try to get our things done. We feel like other people have it 'easier' and are 'smarter' anyways, so we might as well just leave it alone. Or we are just too busy enjoying other things whilst we dont realize the potential fun we could have in getting our things done and succeeding in other areas in life such as school and business. Heres a short personal story of mine,thats when for me, things took a turn:

 When I had chemistry in 10th grade, I sucked at it. I just did not study and it didnt come naturally to me. About to get into 11th grade, I went out with something inbetween a D and E (4-5~).

So here I was, 11th grade. Chemistry again. And then there was this new teacher. She was really cute and good looking! (haha :P). So we got this new teacher and with that, I got my fresh start. She seemed like a really nice person, and she truely was. She was really taking effort in what she did and that really inspired me to change.

 "I've always felt when people showed their effort in something, I owe them my effort as well."

 In the beginning of the year, she asked every single one of us what our goal for this chemistry class was. I sat in front row (prior to that I sat in the last row) and said something along the lines of "Well, I'm going to be honest, I was not the best chemistry-student. I finished last year with really bad grades and my goal is to get a B this year." (B is a 2)

From there on, I tried to focus on the class. When we finished, I quickly recalled what we learned in todays lesson and made sure I got a good bit of grasp of everything. Before the next lesson of chemistry started, I quickly looked into my folder (for like 5-10 minutes) and recalled what we were doing. "Oh yes, thats what we did, right!" Before exams, I did not even have to study. I quickly looked over what we had learned, recalled everything for some minutes and was confident in my knowledge.

And what happened? Suddenly, chemistry was incredibly fun. I understood that I really enjoy being 'good' at something. Being knowledgeable at something was as enjoyable as being the best football-player of the team or something similar.

"I became the best of my class in this course. I went through every exam with an A+ as well as in oral grades. "

I understand that this is not a very groundbreaking achievement. But for me, it teached me something. It teached me a very important lesson.

"If i just put in the time and effort consistently, I will be able to reach my goals. It showed me that it was absolutely possible to change and to reach a level that I've not thought possible before. "

This little achievement might not be very impressive in itself, but relatively speaking, coming from the worst student in a chemistry class to becoming the very best for an entire year or two - thats what was motivating and impressive to me. It meant change and I suddenly understood opportunity.

Before that time, I thought I was just not clever enough. Not as smart as these other kids. And you know what? Maybe, in many things I am not. But they cant out-work me. And thats my life-principle. Thats my goal.

Just like Will-Smith said:

"The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there's two things: You're getting off first, or I'm going to die. It's really that simple, right?

You're not going to out-work me. It's such a simple, basic concept. The guy who is willing to hustle the most is going to be the guy that just gets that loose ball. The majority of people who aren't getting the places they want or aren't achieving the things that they want in this business is strictly based on hustle. It's strictly based on being out-worked; it's strictly based on missing crucial opportunities. I say all the time if you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready."

"On the day that I reached this little personal success, that was the day I started to believe I could do everything. I am convinced that I can do whatever I want, and all of you reading this can do so too, for as long as we just put in the time, effort and hard work."

How not to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work you have to get done

Managing yourself is not easy, and it most certainly is not easy to know exactly what to do next and what to get done right away or what to postpone.

Let me tell you that I have had this problem, where things were just so much that I could not really find the right ancorpoint to even get started. I asked myself how to fix this problem. If there was a better way, I would find it. And I did.

Here is my tips on how not to get overwhelmed by the work you have to get done, ever!:

Basically, we make use of a concept I started to learn about when I was actively trying to understand the process of learning and mastery a bit more. There is some great books out there about the learning-approach (like the Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin) and many more. 

One of the concepts that most of the people that studied learning are familiar with is the concept of 'creating smaller circles'. It is basically a concept of breaking a big issue or topic into smaller chunks.

Now, I used to hate it when people only described concepts and never actually explained how to make use of it. Hence, I will now tell you how I make use of this concept so that you can make use of it too. 

Step 1: Start a list of everything that you have to get done. 

For me, I am currently preparing a bit for my first exams at college. I have to get projects done for photography and graphics, I have to prepare for maths and computer-science. On behalf of this example, first I listed all the things I had to get done:

-My projects

-finishing excercises for the upcoming week 

-going through the entire semester of computer-science

-going through the entire semester of mathmatics

-(...)

You want to make this as precise as possible. Describe what youre actually going to do (the process), not just 'learn maths' or 'finish project'. You want to describe the very process that you have to get done.

Step 2: Prioritizing our list

This is where managing yourself gets a bit more advanced. You dont really need to do this over the simple things you have to get done, but if you really have to manage a lot of stuff, this can make or break you.

I then looked at my list and went through everything that I listed one by one. I knew there was some stuff that I really needed to get done quickly and some stuff that needed less work and attention for now. I sorted my list into priorities:

-My projects*****

-finishing excercises for the upcoming week***

-going through the entire semester of computer-science**

I marked everything with stars. This process is really quick. After that, I basically just re-sorted my list quickly and got something like:

Prio5: (highest priority/amount of stars)

-My projects

-(...)

Prio4: 

-(...)

Prio3:

-finishing excercises for the upcoming week

and so futher.

Step 3: Creating lists of your list - 'Chunking your chunks'!

And here comes the true magic. Now, we start to make use even more so of this concept of creating smaller circles. We begin breaking up our list even more. 

You only want to do this if the things you described in your list are actually a lot of work. Just skip this process for the smaller stuff.

In my example, I had to get things done like "going through the entire semester of computer-science". That's half a year worth of material. Obviously, thats a "bigger chunk of stuff" to get done. 

So now, we start to make chunks here. With everything that we have to understand or remember later on, I create myself what I call a Skill-List.

I dedicate this point of "going through the entire semester of computer-science" its own Skill-List.

My Skill-List will list every single bit of skill or knowledge that I will have to aquire to get this point finished. 

I'm writing a list like this:

Skills to aquire:

-able to read pseudocode-notation

-know about UML-diagrams: [here i could describe more precisely what diagrams exactly etc.]

-(...)

the trick is to describe each skill as precise as possible! Only then you will have an incredibly clear idea of what you want to learn and learning is just "fullspeed-mode". You will never ask yourself where to continue, what to do, what not to learn. 

You have asked all these questions before. Now its just 'execute' time!

Another big big advantage you get is that when you do lists and chunks like this, you know exactly of your weaknesses and strengths. 

Once you understood something completely, you wirte [DONE] behind it. If you sense some problems or need some more clearity, you specify what you need to still look into in the brackets and just go over it again. 

sidenote: Writing [DONE] after you finished a chunk does not only help you see what to do next and what you already looked into, it also reinforces your brain positively. It will remind you that you did your work, this will boost your motivation to go further!

Dealing with procrastination

And here we are, one of my favorite topics. How do I actually deal with procrastination? Generally speaking, procrastination is something we all do and here's why:

"Basically, your body does not want to 'work'."

But why is that? Its because our reptile brain is constantly trying to secure our survival. Working on something is exhausting. It relies on either physical or mental ressources that later on - in a life or death situation we will not have available. Thus, our brain is originally programmed to be rather 'lazy' which is basically a process of saving energy for our survival.

Now that we know where this lazyness is coming from and why we do it, how do we break the cycle?

Well, first of all, there is no 'easy fix' for this. Getting your ass up to work will always be something you have to actively force. But I can show you some ways that you will actually get your things done if you have a strong will.

Earlier in this article, I told you about how I never got my things done for school. I never did my homework, tried to let others do the work and so on.

 But make no mistake, as I'm telling you even the laziest person gets things done when it matters. It's another part of our survival-instinct. The moment we feel it is absolutely neccessary, our brain is able to kick into work-mode. When we feel threatened by defeat and feel the anxiety flowing through our body - we are suddenly ready to get things done.

Now how can we make use of that knowledge? Is there a way to exploit that?

I asked myself this question for quite a long time and then suddenly, I found a solution that works great for me. The basic idea was that I had to break the usual. As if it was neccessary to do things now!

Let me just give you a little example here. I used to not do any homework, reading or anything else. Only just today, I have done the following:

-The first thing after I got up, I was doing a work-out

-After that, I got my schedule done (this is the magic, will explain in a second!)

-I started studying for 3 hours! (actual hours)

-in between an hour of studying, I was getting things done such as 20 minutes of meditation, 5 

minutes of visualization, working out again and similar things

-after I finished studying, I cleaned up my room

-In the evening, I practiced 3 hours of StarCraft 2, which I planned to do as I was unable to play my full 2 hours the day before (I am currently trying to consistently play StarCraft (2 hours a day) from 7-8PM after getting my college-stuff done

-I then took some time off, got some free time with a friend just talking and stuff

-And since more than 2 hours, I'm now writing this blog-entry, as planned for today

I can happily say that I got everything done exactly as I had planned to. There has not been a second that I did not spend the way that I was planning to. 

And this is the key, planning.

To become master of your work, you have to schedule it! 2 Steps to get over your procrastination:

Step 1: Creating a list to set up your day

The first thing I do when I get up is creating myself a schedule for the day. Basically, I think about the things that I'm going to do and the things that I need to get done. 

Then, I'm thinking about how long those things might take and try to see how much time I can actually plan in for each individual action until the next should be occuring or I have to attend somewhere else. 

My list looked something like the following:

-Quick workout (this is to build energy for the day)

-study for X

-study for Y

-study for Z

-inbetween studying: 

break 1: 20 min meditation, get some food

break 2: lunch, 5 min visualization

break 3: (...)

7PM StarCraft 2 (~3 hours)

11PM write blogentry

A lot of the times in my studying-breaks I realize I can get some other stuff done as well so I try to do that. The magic to not lose track of starting with your next goal is to not lose track of time. And here it comes:

A Whiteboard can be a cool and effective way to write down a schedule, a skilllist or similar things

Step 2: Breaking your routine, my number one tip to start doing!

Use a timer. The timer is probably one of the most crucial pieces when it comes to getting over procrastination for a lot of people, and most certainly for me. Why can a timer be so helpful?

It comes down to how you use your timer. Basically, what I'm doing is, once I got up out of bed and got my fitness-routine finished, I get started right away. That is mostly a habit as I've worked hard on that for a while now (habits are an extremely powerful topic that we will talk about in the future).

But even if that is not yet a habbit for you, you can still start right away.

The trick to getting things done is 

a) minimizing downtime (time between thinking about doing and starting)

b) breaking the course

Now, lets say youre not yet that good at minimizing your downtime as you did not yet inhabit a practice to start right away like I did. Thats totally fine. Now, you want to find a way to break the course. 

Usually, you just 'flow' into your day. (Whether thats after work or on a free-day that you want to get things done) Basically, what happens is you just do as you feel. You get some food, relax and at some point you might start doing your work, or not. 

But now, we want to start breaking the course. Breaking the course means we want to stop you from flowing and going like your brain would love to. Why? Because your brain wants to be lazy, remember? Saving up energy.

How do we break our course? How do I finally get started with my task?

We make smart use of what we have available. We use our timer and set an alarm. If you tell yourself to get started with a very specific thing in an exact amount of time and put your mind to it, I guarantee you you will get started.

 That is also part of the reason why we do need our schedule to be hyper-productive. We break our flow, we break our course. We have specific things to get done at specific times, we break a routine and force our brain to change course.

Not just the sheer knowledge that your brain will associate a change of course with a specific time is going to help you to get started, but also the alarm from the clock itself. The alarm suggests a 'change of course' as it always has for us.

Do you remember the alarm-clock from school? Or the alarm-clock at work? An alarm breaks our moment and tells our brain "Wait a second, theres a change of course!" And for a few seconds, we have the power to decide what this next course will be. (again, minimize downtime and get to work asap!)

Getting to work and getting things done however is all connected to your willpower. And willpower works like a muscle. The more you flex it, the more will it grow. As you grow your willpower-'muscle', you will get better bit by bit when it comes to excercising it. So get started now and remember, every step you take will make it easier for the next time ;)!

When youre just starting out to get your work done, you might be getting back into lazy-mode after an hour. Thats not a big deal! Thats what I used to experience too. What we need to do is just keep going consistently - and step by step we will improve and strengthen our willpower and eventually reach a higher level of control. (However, willpower is quite a topic, so this will be for another day :P)

Closing words

Thank you for reading this incredibly long and time-consuming article. I really hope that you can make use of some of the tips and tricks that I'm offering here. 

If you like my work so far, please share and comment this blog! I put a lot of work into writing these articles and I'd really like to hear some of your feedback!

have a great day/night!

Niklas

also check out:
Habits - our number one tool to fulfill our goals

5 ways on how to adapt new values - becoming your greatest idol
Dealing with defeat in competition
How not to care what people think about you
Ego - Understanding the most important concept about our self
Changing your life - how to start