My 10-Minute Strategy to Deal with To-Do List Stress and Work Overwhelm

Plus, a few words about goals, letting go, and how to make 2023 do what you want

January 11, 2023

Ambitious people like us always have too much to do.

I don’t even want to post a picture of my to-do list because it’s…insane. It’s long, is what I’m telling you, and honestly, these past few weeks it’s kind of been kicking my ass.

I’m behind, struggling to catch up, and I’m trying to execute on so many things that I’ve been dropping the ball on some of them.

Things are still going okay, but what I’m saying is that I don’t live some perfect dream life where I work only two hours a day, everything magically gets done and then I just sit around reading books and lifting weights.

I’ve let a great many people down this week, and I’ve been feeling a tad bit overwhelmed.

So what I did (what I’m doing) is taking massive action to change my situation and get back in control. Back on top where I belong. Where we all belong.

I’m going to tell you exactly what I’ve been doing that’s helped immensely when it comes to overwhelm, but a recent book I’ve been reading has been enlightening here as well.

It’s a biography of Michelangelo, by Miles Unger, and it’s…incredible. 

It’s a masterful biography that came out in 2015, and I’ve been just floored by what I’ve seen of Michelangelo’s art and by what I’ve read about how he suffered and slaved over it during the process of its creation.

He also had a problem with perfectionism - and basically a complete inability to delegate anything but the smallest, most inconsequential tasks. He just couldn’t let anything go, wouldn’t allow anyone but himself to do what needed to be done.

The consequence of this, of course, is that he wasn’t nearly as productive as he could have been. Much of his art remained inside him, unrealized.

As much he created, and as much as he’s left us to wonder at, he could have done more. He could have let others help. 

So I’m working on my “perfectionism” - if that’s even what it is. I need to let go, and actually be okay with releasing imperfect work.

The reason it’s in quotes, though, is that I’m not even sure that it is perfectionism. Maybe it’s something else, some other reason why I absolutely…cannot…release anything that has typos, defects, etc.

Maybe I’ll slip a few into this post as “practice” :)

Here’s what’s helped me with my overwhelm…

First, what I did was write out every single possible thing that exists on my to-do list. It used to exist in my mind, and now it’s out on paper. Every single thing that I have to do.

That’s the first step. What you’re doing here is you’re closing mental loops, and you’re putting it all in one place where you can deal with it more effectively.

Now that it’s all out in the open, what I do is write down beside each task how long I think it will take me to complete it.

This is where you need to challenge yourself to do more in less time, either by curbing perfectionism, working more efficiently, or whatever you have to do.

Take the number you wrote beside that task and cut it in half. If you thought that something would take 20 minutes, challenge yourself to do it in 10. 

Then give it your complete, total, absolute focus for ten minutes. 

You might astonish yourself with how fast you can actually complete some of these tasks.

For myself, I was relieved to find out that things that had been weighing on my mind for weeks ended up being finished in just 5 minutes! Imagine the unnecessary mental space that those tasks had been taking up! Space that was now free to devote to my highest calling!

This next part is up to you, but what’s been working for me is to take my entire to-do list in ten-minute chunks.

I take the very next thing, attack it with everything I have for the next ten minutes, then get up, move around, get a drink of water, etc., and then move on to the next thing. If it takes less time than that, I jump immediately into the next thing.

You can string several of these ten-minute blocks together in order to gain the benefit of adding more “deep work” to your day, but if you have dozens and dozens of small things just stressing you the fuck out, it really, REALLY helps to just bang them out one at a time like this and work in small chunks of time.

This is especially true when you have so much to do that you don’t even know where to start.

The biggest waste of time is sitting around worrying that you don’t have enough time to get it all done, but how many times I’ve done exactly that!

What a gigantic waste!

If you’re anything like me, you want to work on everything at once, which just kinda leads to you spinning your wheels, wondering where to start. This method eliminates that whole mess because it’s only ten minutes.

You spend ten minutes on one thing and then you move on to the next thing.

If you feel as though you might make a “mistake” by working on one thing instead of another, this is a way to counteract that. Worst case scenario, you spend ten minutes doing something now that you should have done later.

But it still had to be done eventually…and you did it. I call that a win.

The best case scenario, however, is that you’ve now gathered some momentum, you’ve cleared your mind a little bit, and you’re that much closer to getting it all handled.

Long-term, it’s probably best to walk a thousand miles in one direction, rather than going one mile in a thousand different directions and never ending up anywhere…but as a stop-gap solution to help you refocus and get back on track? It’s definitely worth a try.

One More Benefit of All This

Another benefit of writing it all out is that you can see how long this stuff actually takes! Again, ambitious people like us want to do everything - we think we can do everything - and we tend to take on more than we should.

We overestimate what we can do in a day, but underestimate what we can do in a year.

When I added up the time totals from my to-do list for today, I ended up with 30 hours worth of stuff! That’s insane!

It’s also literally impossible, especially since I didn’t add any time in there for reading, eating, the gym, necessary distractions like seeing my family members (I’m kidding), and so on.

30 hours!

And if I didn’t add up all these individual tasks, I might have fooled myself into believing that I could have got it all done.

But now?

I feel better already. 

And I took a ton of meaningful action today!

I took massive action on things like:

Among my career goals is to become one of the biggest book influencers in the entire world - to help put the right books in the right hands at the right time, and to change people’s lives using the power of the written word.

This is exceptionally demanding work. 

But it’s also exceptionally rewarding, as I’ve met tons of awesome readers and people doing cool things all over the world; I literally get messages every single day from people telling me how I’ve been an inspiration to them, led them to find their new favorite book, etc.

It’s one of the coolest jobs ever!

Which is why I take it so seriously, and why I take on so much.

We’re living in the internet gold rush, basically, where there is so much opportunity to make a full time living doing what you love, and like I’ve been saying all along: for ambitious people, there’s never any end to what we could be doing to advance our careers.

But if you and I want to contribute and compete at the highest possible level, we need to control our daily agendas and maintain high energy levels. 

We need to get on top of our to-do lists, instead of letting them smack us around.

The advice I’ve shared here in this article should be a great help to many of you. It certainly has helped me out quite a bit recently!

A Word About Goals

Okay, so we’re nearing the end here, but one of my main goals with The Competitive Advantage is to help as many people achieve their goals and dreams as possible.

What I love is helping people realize the vision they have for life.

But you need to tell me what those goals are!

I’m interested in hearing about them, so please let know. Then I’ll do my best to create content and come out with advice that’s really going to help you move towards them.

Here are just a few of my goals for January, 2023: 

*Release a BETA version of a reading course that will help people read 52 books a year

*Completely update my website and social media

*Finish Reading Hamlet

I have a few more, but those are the main things I’m working on this month! I know, it’s a lot!

I’m also going to be bringing back the Discipline Reports (where I keep myself accountable to you guys for all the work I do and the actions I take toward my goals), except this time they’re going to be monthly, and they’re going to be called Achievement Reports.

It’s funny: writing them each week was distracting me from actually doing the stuff I needed to do in order to achieve my goals!

But hey, we’ve covered a lot of ground today, and we both have work to do, so let’s get back to it!

I’m serious, though: tell me what your goals are, and I’ll do my absolute best to give you the resources, ideas, contacts, etc. you need in order to achieve them. 

That’s what The Competitive Advantage is all about.

All the best,

Matt Karamazov