Holiday travel and year-end deadlines are right around the corner. Are you feeling tense? Welcome to the club! Strain and anxiety have been so prevalent this year that the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory about family well-being and mental health. Transforming stressful feelings is possible, but you’ll have to do the unthinkable: Unlearn what you know about productivity.
Conventional wisdom says bossing up happens by taking on anything and everything thrown your way. Being a superhero sounds enticing, but only on paper. What happens when you face mountains of data combined with a steep learning curve in the real world? You get overwhelmed and give up.
Alternatively, take charge of your day by thinking like a CEO. CEOs wouldn’t dream of trying to do every job at their company. And they don’t weight all requests with the same importance. Instead, they practice the recommendation a colleague once gave me: “Make the first cut. Make it deep. Make it stick.”
Let’s meet someone who applied smart priority-setting concepts to managing their home. They transformed their daily routine from hectic, self-imposed pressure and striving to a string of little wins.
Audrey at Organized Chaos has advice you thought you’d never hear: Stop worrying about keeping your house Instagram-perfect. That’s what she’s done, and she’s loving it. But then the comments kicked up, with commentors challenging whether her home was truly clean.
Audrey jumped in to clarify the confusion. Her videos aren’t intended to instruct people how to clean like a professional. Instead, she models daily practices to keep a busy house in order. Her secret to cutting overwhelm and supporting her mental health is simple: Make life as easy as possible.
Making life easy starts with choosing whatever room bothers her the most. Then she clears away as much visual clutter as possible, often in 15-minute sprints. Her mantra for a happy home is, “Tidy, not clean.”
In the November series, Mindset Reset, we’re discussing how to shift potential blocking issues into an empowering set-up for future success. It’s natural to close the year feeling pushed, overwhelmed, and even a little anxious about clearing your desk before holiday vacations. But you can lower your stress levels by resetting your mindset from “perfect” to “accomplished.” To mimic Audrey’s mantra, focus on keeping your inbox tidy, not pristine.
And here’s the bonus round: You’re building soft skill competencies like critical thinking and taking a creative approach that will serve your best interests going forward. That’s because these tactics work to your advantage for any big project—from cross-team work collaborations to after-hours passion projects like corralling little kids at the school Christmas concert.
Bring your personal triage plan to life with these rapid-fire steps:
You’ve already tried sacrificing your well-being. This year, have a mindset reset and pace yourself with realistic, attainable goals. When new asks and shiny objects come out of the woodwork, remind yourself to make a first cut, make it deep, and make it stick.