When we launched this blog it marked the beginning of our journey. But really that journey started months ago when we first started talking about the idea of making a change to our lifestyle. I registered the justbealeaf.com domain almost a year before it went live. I spent several of those months deciding on a theme, writing the first few blog posts, and coming up with a strategy for kicking this thing off.
Every time I thought about going live I felt scared, overwhelmed, not ready. I just needed to write a few more posts, or upload a few more photos, find the perfect symbolic launch date, or refine the social media strategy a little more. But what was really stopping me wasn’t any of those things, it was fear. Fear of what our friends and family would think. Fear of no one caring. Fear of failure.
Then one day I got an email reminder that my domain was about to be renewed and thought “Holy moly, it’s been almost an entire year and we still haven’t officially started this thing”. I had been so scared that I would fail, that I hadn’t even given myself the option of failing. You’ve probably heard the phrase “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” and as cliche as it sounds, that’s exactly what was happening. I was avoiding risk, but by doing so I was guaranteeing failure.
Another related challenge is our natural tendency to look at the big picture and get overwhelmed. So many times in life we focus on challenges that are months or even years down the road, to the point that we get overwhelmed and it seems like an unattainable goal, so nothing gets done.
For example, the current goal for what we want our lifestyle to look like in 1-2 years is to be traveling full time. That means selling the house, selling a TON of our stuff, deciding on a travel trailer that we can call home, finding a truck that is powerful enough to pull that trailer, finding a way to work on the road that can support our expenses, and so much more.
When we start focusing on those things it’s easy to quickly get overwhelmed. For Erin, the thought of not having our house is one of her frequent concerns. For me, thinking about how much stuff we will have to sell or get rid of makes my head spin. But those are big picture goals that are 1-2 years down the road. What we should be focusing on right now is “What’s next?”. What is the next small, incremental thing we can be doing right now to work towards those larger goals?
Simplify
I’m a huge believer in lists and I truly could not function without Todoist. I have to-do lists for everything and it’s how I stay organized and get things done. Create tasks for any single thing that needs to be done. Instead of “Clean the kitchen” split out the tasks into “Clean countertops, Sweep floors, Clean stovetop, Organize fridge, Load the dishwasher, Empty the trash, etc”. Every task should be as concise as possible. It helps prevent you from getting overwhelmed, and you get to check tasks off your list more frequently. I could (and probably will) write an entire post about staying organized with lists, but I digress.
About 2 months ago I asked myself “What’s Next?” in our journey, and that thing for me was to launch the site. It didn’t matter what day it was, how many posts I had queued up, or anything else. I couldn’t move forward and focus on the next thing until that was done. So I just did the damn thing.
And guess what? None of those things that I was scared of happened. Instead, we received messages of support, several people said they were thinking about doing something similar, and now we are one small step closer to our ultimate goal. It also opened up a way for me to work on writing, especially about the outdoors here in the PNW, which is something I enjoy and want to do more of.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed about a specific goal or task, ask yourself if you can break it up into smaller, more manageable tasks. No matter how basic that seems, it’s something I have to constantly remind myself. And it really does make a difference. If you get in the habit of simplifying your goals, it makes the next lesson even easier.
Get yourself in motion
The next lesson is that you can’t make progress until you get started. Splitting a large goal into a list of small, manageable tasks is 100% worthless if you never start working on those tasks. To paraphrase Newton’s 1st Law of Motion, “An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion“. Do something, anything, that gets you closer to your goal. Get yourself in motion.
Maybe it’s just starting a task from your list even if you don’t think you can finish it yet. Set a short time limit, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and promise yourself that you will work on the task for that long. When the time limit is up if you still want to stop you can stop. The worst-case scenario is you still made progress. I bet you’ll find the more small tasks you knock out, the more your motivation to continue will grow.
Those are 2 habits that have helped me be more productive and I hope they can help someone else too. Do you have tips for staying focused when you feel overwhelmed? I’d love to hear them in the comments.
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