What To Do When There's Too Much To Do (17 page)

Are you an Eeyore? Remember the gloomy ol' donkey from Winnie the Pooh? “Woe is me. Nobody cares if I get swept away in the flood. Not even going to bother trying to swim.” Do you know people like this? They throw their hands in the air and act as if there's nothing they can do about their lives.

Consider joining a professional group, so you can surround yourself with others who know exactly what you have to deal with—and who may have some tips on how to handle those challenges successfully.

These people chalk up their circumstances to fate, a run of bad luck, or bad karma, when really it's about making poor choices.

You can also make an effort to befriend and surround yourself with positive, upbeat people, both at work and in other aspects of your life. It's a fact that the attitudes of the people you hang out with have a significant effect on your own attitude. You won't be able to avoid all the Eeyores out there, but you can certainly limit your contact with them in favor of bouncy, optimistic Tiggers!

Make empowering choices to manage your capacity. Life is too short to be miserable.

Why are you working so hard? If you're like most of us, family is one of the biggest reasons: You want to provide a good life for the people you love. This is quite the irony, since working long hours keeps you away from your family—the very people for whom you're working so hard to provide. It's too easy to forget an important fact: the best thing you can spend on the people you love is
time
.

Besides giving them the attention they need, spending time with those you love is also a balm for your soul, which allows you to recharge your energy, so you can continue managing your capacity.

Letting work intrude on family time is necessary on occasion; but it should be the exception, never the rule. It's important to unplug sometimes for your health and for your loved ones, who want you to be around. So if you don't want to look
back on your home life with regrets, then it's time to make a bigger hole labeled
FAMILY TIME
in your schedule, and to build all kinds of barriers around it to keep it sacred. Try to focus exclusively on your family during family time (this will be difficult at first), and work toward ways to give more of yourself to them. Here are some ideas:

• Rearrange your work schedule to be home when they are.

• Take Internet training instead of leaving for days at a time.

• Telecommute a day or two a week.

• Hire household help to take care of basic tasks.

• Have sit-down meals together.

• Occasionally combine business travel with vacations, bringing your family along when you travel for work.

• Limit your kids' extracurricular activities.

Not all of these ideas are possible or even practical for everyone. But they offer a place to start, at least, if you're really serious about spending more time with your family.

Scientists have proven that helping others induces physiological changes in the body. Back in the 1980s, New York City's Institute for the Advancement of Health studied a phenomenon called the “helper's high,” an energetic response to helping others that's apparently generated by the release of natural pain relievers called endorphins.
³²
The helper's high not only makes you feel better in a purely physical sense, but it also heightens your energy levels and self-esteem. So spend time volunteering: helping at your church, serving at a food bank, painting someone's house, mowing a lawn, or tutoring a student—anything that matches your passion.

Have you ever had a day where
so
many things went wrong, it started to strike you as downright funny? Your bagel burned. Grrrrr. Your six-year-old couldn't find her other shoe, making her ten minutes late for school and you late for work. Grrrrr. You dropped your purse, and the contents spilled out in your car. Grrrrr. The latch popped open on your briefcase, and your paperwork fell in a puddle. Grrrrr. At lunch with a colleague, you shook the ketchup bottle, and a big blob of ketchup landed on your pants.
Hilarious!
This is the stuff comedies are made of! Your entire morning is fodder for a sitcom! You just can't make this stuff up.

Consider mentoring someone new in your field. Not only will you get a natural high from helping someone, the teaching process tends to go both ways. You may just learn a thing or two from your mentee.

I once presented a seminar at an environmental engineering firm. A participant told me a story about an engineer supervising the construction of a wind-monitoring tower for a study involving wind turbines. Something went very wrong, and the 130-foot tower began to crumple the second it was completely upright. While the engineer yelled expletives, one of his coworkers stood right beside him, laughing his head off. The frustrated engineer stared at his coworker in amazement. The coworker said, “Sometimes, all you can do is laugh!” The engineer immediately saw his point and started laughing himself. He knew the next step was simply to start all over again. So he could either wear himself out by continuing to yell expletives or make the best of it by enjoying a much-needed laugh.

Whether you laugh or complain, you won't change the situation. Complaining will make you feel irritable and depressed, drain your energy, and make others stay away from you. Living by the old saying, “Laughter is the best medicine!” is a real energy booster.

If you ever feel the urge to burst out laughing because everything's going so badly, share the joke with those around you, so they know you're not laughing at them.

What do you surround yourself with to boost your mood? Some people hang out with happy people, reasoning that the good vibes will rub off (and they usually do). Some post cartoons on the office and cubicle walls, or souvenirs from fun vacations. I have an “I love me” wall with degrees, certificates, awards, and so on to remind me of accomplishments. I keep a wall calendar to remind me my job is to keep it filled with speaking engagements. I have photos of my family, husband, and children, to remind me a lot of people love me. My dog and two cats run around my office, to remind me to play. Watching my two Siamese fighting fish (a.k.a. Betta fish) swim around relaxes me. The glass partition separating them keeps them from destroying each other, reminding me to maintain an assertive edge! What keepsakes, toys, plants, or reminders do
you
keep around to boost your productivity? If you don't have any, get some, stat!

The only way the PWF process will work is if you take direct action to
make
it work. Any change requires you to focus your efforts on actively producing the changes you want to achieve. Unfortunately, too many of us seem more interested in thinking good thoughts than in actually taking action.

Unless you've been living in a cave the last few years, you've certainly heard of “The Secret.” This popular philosophy purports to relate the true secret of success in all aspects of life. It's all about optimistic thinking and a faith in abundance; that
is, a belief the Universe will provide for you, assuming you believe in whatever it is you really want.

The Secret is often interpreted to mean that all you have to do is wish really hard for good things to happen, and they will. To be fair, though, I believe that many of the people who've adopted the philosophy have misinterpreted it. I think The Secret is really a reminder of the value of positive thinking and self-belief. There's nothing wrong with either; in fact, they're necessary ingredients to any success.

But let's face it: You can't hope things into existence just by thinking good thoughts about them. True productivity requires action. You have to jump into your work with both feet, facing the challenges between you and your goals and dealing with them in a proactive way. As the saying goes, motion always beats meditation—assuming you've done your homework and thought about the potential outcomes.

So use your intelligence, energy, and problem-solving skills to grab hold of any tools available, and use them to get the job done. And always, always, keep your eyes open to the possibilities!

If you combine positive visualization with positive action, the productivity that results will bring you the things you want.
You
will solve the problem, not magical thinking. But if you just sit there and dream without applying your physical energy to what you want to accomplish, you're wasting your time and talent, and nothing productive will ever happen.

When you do put your energy into action, give it your all. Some may think this statement contradicts my mantra to reduce, reduce, reduce, but I don't think so. What I'm telling you here is not to work harder or longer, but to focus your energy like a laser. Don't make a half-effort at getting something important done. Stay focused to ensure it
does
get done, and don't give up too soon.

A while back, I was watching my son James at baseball practice, and the coach was teaching the nine-year-olds to “run past the base”—to pretend the base was actually ten feet
past
the base. When I ran track in high school, the coach taught us to “run past the finish.” At the Indy 500, you can bet the cars don't slow down as they near the checkered flag—they speed up and go as fast as possible.

While working on a critical task, give it 110 percent of your energy and focus, so you don't undershoot the mark. That way, you won't have to waste time doing it over.

In other words, you can't just stop when you hit your goal, because you would have to slow down as you near it. Instead, pretend your goal is farther away than the endpoint, whatever that looks like for you. You can't ease up as you near the base, the tape, or the finish line. Pretend there's a dragon breathing fire down your back. Don't get lazy or slow down just when your greatest efforts are required and count the most. As Olympic contenders who have lost the gold by a few hundredths of a second know, you can't win if you let up. So stay in the lead and run past the base, giving it your all!