Love Life with Matthew Hussey - The No-Overwhelm Plan to Get Things Done

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

“I’m going to finish this work project in one hour.” “I’m going to clean out all of the clutter in my house today.” “I’m going to lose 10 pounds this week.” I hate to break it to you, but as soon as you commit yourself to a grandiose plan, you doom yourself to fail. You know what I’m talking about: You get so overwhelmed with the big picture that you end up doing nothing at all. Well, I’ve got a plan of attack for you that will help you actually get things done…so you have the confidence you need to get even more things done! It all starts with a first step…

This is Love Life, and I'm your host, Matthew Hussey. It's so exciting to hear feedback from women who say things like, Matt, I tried the advice from your podcast, and I met someone incredible that same night. But occasionally, I'll hear something like, when something finally starts to go right in my life, I have trouble trusting that it's real, and I just can't enjoy it. If you can relate, I want you to stay tuned until the end of today's show because there's something really exciting I want to share

with you that has the power to change your way of thinking forever. But first, let's get to the episode. I wanted to give you a little something for your productivity today to help you get things done. I think that one of the biggest problems we suffer from is being too grandiose in the way that we approach our goals. One of the ways that we do this, for example, is with our email, with our inbox. We look at how much has stacked up. We look at how many unread messages there are. We look at how many archive messages there are that we need to just delete. And we make a big, bold statement when we talk to people like, I need to clear my inbox or I want to zero out my inbox.

And, of course, immediately it creates this grandiose sense of the goal. We might do this when we talk about our house. You know, I need to clear the whole house. And, of course, once you start talking in those terms, even the language of it begins to put you in overwhelm. Because it's a big goal. Suddenly clearing out all of the clutter in your house is a big goal, especially if it's been building up for the last five years. Clearing your inbox, if you haven't deleted it all in six months, trying to suddenly zero out your inbox to get to nothing.

That's a big goal to say, I'm going to do that. And you recognize this as well. Even in your conversation casually with other people, I want to clear my inbox. It begins to introduce vocabulary that scares you. It gets you into overwhelm. And the problem with overwhelm is that you snap. You short circuit. So now, rather than doing something, you do nothing because you look at it and you go, well, I can't possibly achieve that goal today. I'm going to move on to something less productive. Here's what we need to do.

Start thinking much more humbly about what it is we want to achieve on those things. So, for example, you're trying to clear your inbox. Say, all right, I'm going to make sure I get to the end of today and all of today's emails are cleared and responded to and the ones from yesterday. Tomorrow, you say all of today's are going to be cleared and the emails from two days ago. So as you go through the days, each day you clear the present day and one day of history so that you're always up to date

but you're going through the backlog day by day. Each day that gives you a manageable thing to do, as opposed to your grandiose vision of, I have to clear my inbox. Now you're staring at 700 or 2000 emails that you haven't cleared and seeing this as a job for today. Well, of course, you know, you couldn't complete that given the whole day. Just focused on that one thing with no break in your concentration. So how are you supposed to get your head around accepting this task and going at it with any confidence? It's impossible.

So this is kind of a think big, act small thing. You can have this idea of where you want to go, your vision of what you're trying to do over the next two months, three months, six months. But start acting smaller. If you're in your house and you know you want to start this process of cleansing your house of all the crap, fine. Go into one drawer. Today is about this one drawer. I'm going to clear this drawer and get all of this stuff out. By the way, something interesting happens when you do that. You get into a kind of flow state anyway. You start to feel this rhythm that when you do that. You get into a kind of flow state anyway. You start to feel this rhythm that gets you into a productive state that might even send you to the second draw that day or at least the next day. But you start to get into a state of confidence where you say, oh, I'm actually making a little

tiny dent here. I want to carry on. But that doesn't happen with the grandiose idea of what you're going to achieve today. So stop acting like Superman or Superwoman today and start thinking more humbly. What's one small part of this I can attack right now that I can get a sense of achievement and accomplishment from so that I can go to this task again tomorrow with confidence? So that's it. A little bit of productivity tips there for you. Go and use them. Go tackle a small part of one thing right now. Eliminate the vocabulary that makes it this grandiose, huge thing and start thinking more humbly about the task at hand. I will speak

to you soon. Thank you for listening. Go follow me on Facebook. I'm at Coach Matthew Hussey. I'll see you soon. Take care, guys. Now, if you can't enjoy the good things that come into your life because you don't feel worthy, I have an incredible opportunity for you. I want you to apply for my Matthew Hussey retreat. On this powerful program, we'll go way beyond the tips I teach you in my podcasts, straight to the core of your deeper issues so that you can overcome them once and for all. I'll give you the tools to change the relationship you have with yourself so that you can finally achieve the core confidence you need

to get the love, the success, and the happiness you deserve. Right now, there are extremely limited spots available on the retreat, but one of them could be yours. To book your phone interview with one of my expert mentors, just go to lovelifepodcast.com forward slash retreat.