In many of my client sessions over the last couple of weeks, a theme has emerged.
I’m overwhelmed.
I can’t get anything done.
Everything is top priority.
There’s not enough time to actually work.
I am so stressed out.
The analogy that came up for me is a person working at a computer. She opens a tab for her email. She opens a tab for her calendar. She opens a tab for her project management software. She opens her text messages, her WhatsApp, her kids’ school website, three for research for a work project, and her college’s reunion page. There’s a tab with the article her mom sent, and one she refreshes each day to play Wordle.
There are a lot of tabs open, literally and figuratively.
Each tab is a task. Each tab is something we can’t quite finish, and when we navigate away from it or open yet another tab, some part of our brain stays aware that we’re not quite done. The sense of incompletion adds to the cognitive load of doing the tasks themselves, and before too long, we’re paralyzed.
Obviously, some tasks and decisions need lengthy, careful decision. They stay “open” because it’s not time yet to decide and to move on to the next step. But the more tabs we have open, the more stretched we feel. It becomes hard to tell which decisions deserve all this time, and which need a quick decision so that we can save our bandwidth for the top priorities.
If this sounds familiar, let me share what my clients have come up with. They are finding two or three “open tabs” they can deal with, right now. One client had a household task that she just wasn’t getting around to, and she felt guilty about and preoccupied by it not getting done. She hired someone to take care of it for her. Tab closed.
Another had a recurring meeting that was requiring him to miss taking his kids to school, and he had never asked if the meeting could be rescheduled. He asked, and it could. Tab closed.
Yet another client decided that she had all the information she needed to schedule a summer vacation, so instead of letting “vacation?” follow her from week to week on her to-do list, she bought tickets and booked an AirBnb. Tab closed.
With these tasks taken care of, these clients now have more brain space to tackle the really knotty issues, the ones that deserve time and space.
What tabs do you have open? What can you close to make room for what matters?
