Coping WIth Panic Paralysis Draft 1

Panic Paralysis

So you have a whole load of jobs to do many of which are urgent and all of which will have to be done at some time.  The temptation is to pick the one that is easiest to deliver, and work on it exclusively until it is done.  As always, it takes longer to finish than you expect.  But at least you have made some progress.  You finish it off.  You then have to confront the same dilema again.  So the job that is now the least difficult to work on hits the top of the list.

Soon enough the day is gone.  Your job list is now fuller of difficult jobs than it was before, and the urgent ones are more urgent than they were before.  You go to be resolving that tomorrow is another day.

This is a state I have found myself in often and which I refer to as panic analysis.  These episodes are never fun and can be really traumatic.  And they tend on the whole to get worse rather than better.   In fact they are one of the biggest arguments I know for not taking on too many projects.  A day of simultaneously working hard and prevaricating is hard to beat for being soul destroying.  Wouldn't it be great if you could just focus on your key projects that are going to deliver great results?

But of course you can't.  You aren't at that stage yet.  So what is the best strategy to adopt?

The best thing is to do the exact opposite of what you would like to be doing and what you probably are doing.   Get a timer out, and stick to working out whatever you are doing now for a set period of time.  I'd suggest 15 minutes, but 10 minutes and even 5 minutes would work.   25 minutes is fine.  An hour is too long.  You only have a few hour long sessions available, and you need to cover everything on your list.

Use the first session to make sure you have a list of all the things you need to be working on.  If you have a good system this won't be too much of a problem.  In fact I'd say that the proof of a good system is that you have a good list of your priority activities.  If you don't, then you don't have a good system.  Start your good system by creating a list.

Now work down the list working for your set time period on each of them.  If there is one that is clearly the priority, then alternate that task with ones on the list.  Each time you start a new job off the list try and look at the job and break it down into small chunks that you can easily cope with.  As you come to the end of your timed session aim to finish it in such a way that you can easily pick it up again.  Remember your goal is to get clarity .