 Today's anxiety hack is designed to help you when you are feeling overwhelmed by the huge amount of tasks you have to do. Now this is something that can affect any of us and you can get to a point where there are so many things on your mind that you need to do that you feel that you can't do any of them. And we end up in this really vicious cycle because we need to get things done to feel better but because there's so many we feel unable to start and so the list gets longer and longer and ahhh. Okay so this is a really really simple strategy to help you regain control and I like to call it dump delegate do because I love alliteration. So you start off first of all by writing everything down dump it on the page just make a big big big big list of all the things that are on your mind all the things that need to be done they don't need to be written out perfectly it doesn't matter how you do it just get them out on the paper and then our first job is the best one which is dumping stuff so we then look at that list and we are honest with ourselves which of the things on this list actually need doing because lots of them do not many many things on your to-do list will be there because they're there out of habit or they are there because someone else wants you to do that thing for them and it's not anything to do with you and you've somehow ended up taking on this job that's kind of superfluous or someone else didn't want or they are there and you don't really even remember why they're there but you feel you should do them or they're just there and they're not really going to make a big difference anyway so just work out what can you get rid of what can you take off your to-do list this is particularly helpful if you have regular tasks that you're doing and they don't really need doing so what can you take off I often challenge people to write a to-don't list which is writing a list of things that you just really don't need to be doing anymore what could come out of your daily weekly monthly routine how can you trim it down so yeah dump stuff cross out as many things as you can on that list be bold get rid of whatever you can dump it dump it dump it and then it's gone haha next we look to delegate and this is about taking tasks on our list and thinking what can I pass on to someone else I'm sure you all know what the word delegate means now this is particularly helpful if you are perhaps struggling and you've got other people in your lives being really kind saying is there anything I can do to help and normally we go I don't know I can't even marshal my thoughts let alone give you a response to that but if we write our list and there's a load of stuff that needs doing actually suddenly we can give tangible tasks to other people who care and who wants to help and actually that's great because it takes it off our list and it enables them to do something practical and feel genuinely helpful because usually when people say is there anything I can do to help they would love it if you could give them a task because they feel like they're helping and it makes them feel good and it makes you feel better so it's win-win so this is something I try to employ a lot in my own life just in day-to-day someone says anything I can do to help when they walk in the kitchen and I'm trying to prepare food for a million people I usually say yes please chop up that carrot or yes please take this to the bin or whatever but you can do it in your wider life as well so you might need someone to go and pick something up for you or to walk your dog or whatever it might be so have a think through your list is there anything there that you could easily delegate to other people who are willing to step up and help and or you might have other people within your context who you're able to delegate to generally anyway and you might be able to let go of some of those tasks and pass them on to colleagues or similar to do so you've dumped and you've delegated now all that's left I'm afraid is to do so you are left with a list of things that you think do need to be done and which need to be done by yourself so now what I would do here especially if you're feeling overwhelmed and you've been struggling to get stuff done look for some quick wins so these are things that will not take too long to do and which you'll be able to see the impact of having done so jobs that are quick but have a tangible result so I would take off some of the quick wins and try to do those first now the reason I do that is partly because you can get through more on the list more quickly when they're small but partly because when you can see the results of the effort you've put in it's really motivating and it often will inspire you to go on and do the trickiest stuff now not everything on your list is going to be like this some things are going to be bigger and often we end up putting those things off now what I suggest about the big things is to try and break them down into smaller bite size chunks so my mother-in-law always tells me you need to eat an elephant one bite at a time which is basically saying let's break it down into small manageable things we can do don't actually eat an elephant that would not be good I don't think it would go down well but break things down into manageable chunks if you've got big tasks to do so for example I will sometimes have on my to-do list write your new book that's really really unmanageable and instead I will break it down into chapters and then into sections of chapters and then into the tasks of what I need to do in order to write the sections of those chapters for example but whatever your big job is normally it's made up of a few smaller tasks and it might be that each of those tasks only takes a few minutes and you could do one of them now and you're on your way so break big tasks down into more manageable chunks so there you go very very simple make a list dump what you can delegate what you can and then do your quick wins and then break down the remaining tasks into more manageable chunks hopefully you will find that this will help you to feel a bit more in control and next time you feel so overwhelmed by how many things there are to do that you can't do anything you feel able to make a bit of a start good luck let me know how you found it and if you've got other strategies for managing that feeling of overwhelmed when there's just too much to do I'd love to hear about your ideas in a comment below so comment below with your ideas for managing when you're overwhelmed with too many things to do I hope it was helpful take care be kind to yourselves and stay safe and I will see you next time and don't forget to subscribe new videos every Tuesday and Friday take care bye