Start Right Where You Are. Sam Bennett

Busy is not a virtue.

      Saying that you feel overwhelmed is about as useful as telling the doctor that you feel tired. It’s not that it’s not true, it’s just that there are too many root causes of tiredness for it to be helpful in diagnosis. There are a lot of different ways to be overwhelmed, and each of them needs a slightly different cure.

      Here are nine of the ways I’ve found:

      • too many ideas

      • too many half-finished projects

      • too many intermediate steps

      • actually, underwhelmed

      • buying groceries at the Quickie Mart

      • Cantsayno syndrome

      • too much time / no deadline

      • time boulders

      • overwrought because of chronic overcomplication

      In the following sections we’ll look at each of these one at a time.

      LITTLE CHANGES ACTION STEP: Stop saying you’re overwhelmed. If you must refer to your activity level, at least try something a bit more amusing. My grandmother used to say she was “busier than a one-armed paper hanger.” Or make up an expression of your own, like “Too many baskets, only one burro.” Take responsibility by saying, “I’ve chosen to keep my schedule quite full this week,” or admit that you kind of relish it by saying, “I’m in the deep end of the pool with no floaties this week, and while I’m having fun paddling, it’s not leaving me time for anything extra.”

8. You’re Overwhelmed Because You Have Too Many Ideas

      ONE OF THE PROBLEMS my creative clients experience is a surfeit of ideas. No sooner do they have one, vivid, glorious, full-blown idea (which, in and of itself, overwhelms them, because how could you even begin moving forward on such a big idea?) than they have another and another.

      Should you create a gallery show featuring the photographs you took at the end of your grandfather’s life? Or move to Oregon and open a yoga studio? But you’ve always wanted to publish your poetry, too. . . .You can see how a person could get immobilized, watching brilliant ideas shoot across their mind one after the other, like falling stars.

      If you are this kind of a person, you have a beautiful, fertile mind. (Please tell me that you’ve found yourself a line of work where this quality is appreciated.)

      Start writing these ideas down. You don’t need to commit to any of them, but you can start enjoying the flow of innovation. After all, not every idea is meant to be acted on. Also, once you start writing your ideas down, you might realize that some of them are recurring, and you can take the persistence of the idea as a sign of its vigor. Or seeing them all together, you might notice that some ideas could be combined. For example, you might find that making a short Ken Burns–style film or slideshow featuring your photographs with you reading your poems as a voice-over might create something poignant and wonderful. Who knows, maybe you could even play it as a closing meditation when you teach yoga in Oregon.

      Stop thinking that you have too many ideas and start appreciating and managing your ideas instead. You may find that taking the pressure off makes it easier to turn some of those ideas into reality.

      LITTLE CHANGES ACTION STEP: Start writing down all of your ideas, no matter how far-fetched, foolish, or plain-Jane they may seem. Next, find a good place to store them all. I like to use those cardboard magazine holders as a kind of stand-up vertical file, but accordion file folders, large envelopes, and old tea tins work fine, too. Or perhaps you’ll prefer an online solution. Whatever works for you is what’s best.

9. Completion Is Overrated