We have a saying at work that fits all aspects of life, you might have heard it before, “How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time.”
Last week I was running around, too many home duties and work was busy. One morning I woke up anxious about all the tasks ahead of me, then as I am walking to the bathroom, a little voice whispered that saying, How do you eat an Elephant…. In that moment, it was like someone took the weight off my shoulders. I pivoted to evaluating what tasks for work were most important and required action, not just today but this morning. Once that was out of the way, I reviewed my list again and determined what else was pressing for work for today. Once I captured those items, I looked over my home duty list and did the same thing.
What a difference just going little by little did for me that day. I was overwhelmed, but it was fixable. Sometimes we need to slow down in order to speed up.
You know that feeling when you have accomplished a lot that day? Well, on this particular day, it was not only a sense of accomplishment, but a grateful heart I had that whisper in the morning to take it one minute or task at a time.
Feeling overwhelmed? One bite at a time…
I tell myself the same thing all the time, but sometimes I use the speech from the end of The Martian: “You solve one problem. Then you solve another. Then another. And if you solve enough problems then you get to come home [have cocktail, workout, chillax with family, etc] Thankfully I don’t live on Mars so solving for oxygen is never a problem.