Overwhelmed? Do 5 Things.

At this time of year, feeling out-of-control busy is the status quo for just about everyone I talk to. The piles get bigger and the lists get longer. To quote Steve Martin in the movie Parenthood, “My whole life is have to.”

So I thought I’d share a little trick I use to ease that feeling that there’s just too much and I’ll never get to it all and I just want to crawl in bed and never come out again.

I call it Do 5 Things.

When I start to feel paralyzed by all the the crap I need to do, the crap that I’ve neglected, and the crap I never should have said yes to in the first place, I tell myself to just do five things, five really easy things, and that’s it. I don’t have to tackle the whole of it — just do five things that will make a tiny dent, then stop. Knowing I only have to do a little bit calms me down, because I’m giving myself permission to do almost nothing. I’m basically telling myself, You want to stay on the couch and watch House Hunters and hope it will all go away? Great. Do that. But before you do, just take care of five small things.

Here’s a quick illustration. Last night, the counter to the right of my kitchen sink looked like this:

This particular counter is a pretty good barometer of my state of mind. If it’s clear, things are great. If it looks like this, I’m starting to fall apart. I have been avoiding this counter for weeks. That leopard water bottle? It has literally been in that exact spot for almost a month. It was left behind after my daughter’s soccer game and we never figured out who it belonged to, so it just sits there. I don’t know what it’s waiting for. And see that rubber band hanging out of the little wooden drawer? I could tuck it in and close the drawer properly, but it’s too much effort.

It’s funny, because looking at it now, I can’t imagine what’s so hard. I know where most of that stuff goes, but that’s the thing about being overwhelmed: It makes you stupid. When I get in this paralyzed state, I can’t think straight. I look at tasks that in theory are pretty easy, and I just can’t. I can’t do it. Any of it.

Okay, so I attacked that counter with my “Do 5 Things” technique. Now the key with this strategy is that the five things have to be very, very small. Take that fruit, for example. I buy it, then ideally, I wash it and put the clean fruit in a basket for eating. But “wash fruit” cannot be one of the five things, because “wash fruit” actually involves taking it out of the bags, peeling off all the stickers, washing it, drying it, and putting it over in the basket. That’s too many steps for an overwhelmed person. Which is why some weeks, the fruit just sits there in bags, slowly molding in its own sweaty condensation. In “Do 5 Things” mode, taking the fruit out of the bags counts as just one thing.

So here are the five things I did:

(1) Put the dry erase marker in the drawer (which is just under this counter…I wasn’t kidding when I said think small).

(2) Recycled the UNICEF letter.

(3) Put the UNICEF boxes all together in one of the wine cubbies so they’d be ready for Halloween night (three of these came home from school today).

(4) Took the new scissors out of the package and put them into that same drawer.

(5) Took the fruit out of the bags.

Voila. Better already, see?

What’s that? You say it looks like more than five things have been taken away? Yes, indeedy, since I was already on a roll, I also (6) Put the coffee cup in the dishwasher, and (7) Put the leopard bottle in the Goodwill pile. (I don’t like that metallic taste.)

See, this is where the real magic of Do 5 Things reveals itself. By the time you get to item number 5, you’re already on a roll. Almost every time I use it, I end up doing more than five things. Sometimes way more. Gladly. Because breaking that inertia is all I really need. The small bits of progress motivate me to keep going. And this time was no different. I put away the three barrettes, the sunglasses, the Skylander cards. The more I did, the faster I moved. And within 15 minutes, it was all done, with nothing left but a pair of reading glasses and an envelope full of coupons I’ll probably never use:

This strategy works with just about anything. If your email inbox is packed, just tell yourself you’re going to delete five emails. If you have 120 essays to grade, do five of them. If you have a presentation to give and you haven’t even started, just open up a new PowerPoint and make five really rough slides.

In some cases, you’ll only get the five things done and find you still want that couch. That’s fine. You should never use Do 5 Things with the intention of making yourself do more. You have to be nonchalant about it, otherwise your overwhelmed self will get suspicious. Maybe after an hour of couch time, you’ll be ready for five more things. Put enough little dents in a big block of marble, sooner or later you’ll have something that looks like a sculpture.

The rest of my kitchen is still kind of a train wreck, but that counter is now a thing of beauty. And sometimes two square feet of open space is all we need to start feeling a little more in control. ♥