7 Irrational Tips To Help You Conquer Your Overload
I laughed out loud as I saw the request. I had signed up to receive a series of emails to help me achieve my goals. I subscribe to several of these services per year. While I don’t always follow every strategy offered, I usually find at least a few ideas that can help me personally and that I can pass along to others. That morning’s email, however, did not deliver a tip I planned to follow. What was it you ask? To drink half of my body weight in water in one day.
While I am sure the author meant to say I should drink half of my body weight in ounces of water, I chuckled as I thought about the perils of ingesting half of my body weight in water in a day. If I was delivering a keynote, it would be a short one. A training program would have LOTS of breaks, and a coaching session would certainly be limited to 30 minutes… or less. And I’m not sure I could guarantee I would be listening as intensely as I should be during the call.
The humorous experience was also a good reminder to me of what gets us into overload mode so often. We make irrational expectations of ourselves. We do things like:
✔️Fill our days with meetings but somehow still expect to get deep work done
✔️Make a list of our top priorities but not take the next step to determine where work on them will take place during our week
✔️Fail to build routines into our day that would help reduce the constant decision fatigue because we wouldn’t have to think so much about the little things
✔️Neglect sleep yet expect to be fully present in every moment of the following day
Don’t get me wrong. I understand that we don’t always need to be rational in our choices. Creativity, education, and even science thrives when people are willing to think irrationally at least for a little while. Making irrational choices, especially with our time and energy, however, rarely help us achieve our desired outcomes.
Making irrational choices, especially with our time and energy, however, rarely help us achieve our desired outcomes.
The interesting paradox I find is that just as making irrational choices gets us into trouble with our time and productivity, we can also make irrational choices to improve our situation. And on that thought, here are several "irrational" choices you could make to reduce the overload in your life:
Turn off every notification on your electronic devices
Only have your social media apps on one device, and make it the one that is the most inconvenient for you to use
When planning your day or week, determine the amount of time you think each activity should take, and for one week, add those items to specific days/times on your calendar
Have the courage to tell someone who regularly expects you to attend a meeting that you won’t be able to make the meeting this week
Invest the time to plan out your personal time just as intensely as you plan your workday
Make only values-based decisions for one day (you might start with a half-day if it’s a practice you haven’t done in a while)
Only check your email 3 times per day (If you pull this one off, send me an email and I’ll happily send you a prize for your complete lack of rational thinking)
In all honesty, that email request to drink 94 pounds of water (about 12 gallons) did get me thinking about my current consumption level and what steps I could realistically take to achieve my goals. Maybe that was the intent all along. I sure hope so, because I’ve got a long flight next week, and if I do exactly what they asked me to do… I might not be waiting until the seat belt sign goes off to get up and move about the cabin. ✈️
