When you’re busy with a never-ending to-do list, a business to run, a home to run, kids to take care of and yourself to take care of, it’s easy to feel you have no choice but to keep going.

If, like many of us, you feel there’s never enough time, you’re probably used to cramming as much as you can into every single minute with your head down and your game face on. 

You may know that your current way of doing things isn’t working - it feels difficult, heavy, and exhausting – but you’ve convinced yourself that you simply don’t have time to do anything about it.

I’ve lost count of how many people have told me over the years that their biggest source of stress and frustration is their inbox.

It IS stressful though, isn’t it?

All those unread emails. Never quite sure whether there’s something important buried that you’ve forgotten about.

As we enter another new year, you may be expecting me to write about a productivity hack that will help you sort your life out in 2018. Never fear - I have loads of tips and new resources up my sleeve to share with you throughout this year! But right now, I want to take advantage of this time of reflection to go a little deeper.

Way back in January I set myself a theme for 2017: ‘slow and simple’.

Over the last few months I’ve strayed from the slow and simple path and realised that perhaps I ought to take some of my own advice. Today I’d like to share my experience and offer four tips if, like me, you have a lot on your plate.

How much sleep did you get last night? Did you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world? Or are you still groggy now, dragging yourself through your day feeling sluggish, irritable and unable to concentrate?

In this week’s Getting Stuff Done Gold, I’d like to introduce you to Kelly Exeter from A Life Less Frantic (you can see why I like her already, right?) and Swish Design.

How much time do you spend sitting at your desk? It’s easy to get to the end of the day and realise that apart from the odd trip to the kitchen or bathroom you haven’t budged.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how bad that is for our health, but have you thought about how bad it is for our productivity?

Productivity is all about doing more, more, more, right?

Not from where I’m sitting it isn’t.

I tried cramming more and more in and the result was stress and anxiety.

With all the productivity know-how in the world, there are still only so many hours in the day. Do you really want to spend all those hours trying to get more and more stuff done?

I’ve written before about how stressed I became in my last ‘proper’ job. When I was at rock bottom, I was desperate for a solution, and so began my frantic google search for things like ‘help me slow down’. It was from there that I discovered the joy of decluttering!

I threw myself into it with as much gusto as I could muster. It felt AMAZING. I got rid of over 2000 things and our house suddenly felt like an oasis of calm.

But then something interesting happened.

Have you experienced overwhelm in the past? Are you feeling overwhelmed right now?

This month’s tip is for you.

(This approach works brilliantly when the thing that feels overwhelming absolutely has to get done. Just take a moment to check in with yourself: does everything that you think needs to happen really need to happen? If the answer is yes and you feel like you’re drowning, read on.)

Ah, procrastination. We all do it, don’t we?

What we’re doing bores us, so we switch to something more interesting.

What we’re doing is difficult, so we switch to something easy.

We can’t decide what to do, so we scroll our Facebook feed waiting for inspiration to strike.

We all know how it feels like to sit down with a plan for the day, only for something to pull the rug out from under our feet and throw everything into disarray. The annoyance, the frustration, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realise that the lovely calm day you were hoping for just ain’t gonna happen.

A couple of weeks ago I had such a day.

I recently saw something somewhere on the t’interweb that really made me stop and think. I can’t remember where I saw it, or exactly what it said (great story, Louise), but basically someone was questioning the merits of being organised.

Everyone talks about being organised as though it’s some great virtue. But is that really the case?

Even though we’re using less and less paper these days, general detritus still tends to accumulate on and around our desks as we work. Scraps of paper, mugs of cold coffee, things you’ve printed off, notes you’ve made during phonecalls. It all builds up.

If you just get up and walk away at the end of the day, chances are you’ll start the next day feeling a little ‘off’. If you were feeling drained, frazzled or overwhelmed the day before and you haven’t tidied up, you’ll be reminded of that negative juju the moment you sit down the next day. One bad day can easily turn into a bad couple of days, which can soon escalate into a bad week.

Today’s Getting Stuff Done Gold comes from Australia. More specifically, from the brilliant Michael Back, customer experience enthusiast, marketing & social media dude, people lover and provider of clarity to small businesses. (And all-round lovely guy. I’ve worked with him. He’s awesome.)

Michael’s article, “The triangle: lame musical instrument, amazing productivity tool”, caught my eye for a few reasons. Firstly, it involves a triangle. Anyone who’s been through my Getting Stuff Done Challenge knows how I feel about the number three, so BOOM – box ticked. Secondly, it takes a corporate-ish productivity tool and explains how it could be usefully deployed in a wide range of situations. And thirdly, it made me laugh. 

Last weekend I received a message from a friend who was feeling overwhelmed. She had loads of ideas, but was struggling to focus and prioritise.

We jumped onto Skype and spent a little time talking things through. During the course of our conversation, my lovely friend used a phrase that stuck with me. She described what I do as ‘compassionate, sustainable productivity’.

Her words really resonated with me; I felt she’d really hit the nail on the head. Here’s why…

“I can’t be bothered.”

A phrase uttered by teenagers the world over! But although we might not say it out loud (or perhaps we do?), we adults can also be afflicted by a severe case of ‘meh’. You know the feeling: there’s something we know needs doing, but we just can’t be bothered. We’d much rather be doing something else.

The reality is that we’re not going to feel motivated 100% of the time. And no matter how much we love what we do, if we decided only to do things when we felt motivated to do them, we probably wouldn’t make much progress.

But there are things you can do to coax your motivation and enthusiasm out of hiding when all you want to do is nothing much.

I hear them all the time from people who are drowning in a sea of ever-growing to-dos and the pressure of juggling their family, friends and work. Those four little words that many of us utter (or scream inwardly) several times a day: “I don’t have time”.

You may have noticed me talking about getting stuff done with less stress and more ease. But what exactly does that mean?

Hopefully the first part is fairly self-explanatory. We all want to get through our day with as little stress as possible, so anything we can do to minimise our triggers and maintain a sense of calm has got to be a good thing.

But what on earth do I mean when I talk about more ease?

Hands up if your work involves doing just one thing. One project at a time. One client at a time. Anyone? No-one?

I thought not. That’s just not how things work in the real world. We're all working on lots of different projects simultaneously. We have lots of clients to look after. Lots of different demands on our time.

Last week I shared some tips to help you manage your time when you’re working with multiple clients or have lots of projects on the go. This week I have three suggestions that will help you stay organised and focused when things could easily start to feel out-of-control.

I recently asked the good people of Facebook to tell me where they struggle most when it comes to their productivity. One of the themes that arose was how to juggle multiple clients or projects without becoming stressed.

At the time of writing, I’m happily supporting 15 small business owners, so you might say that I have form in this area! I’d like to share four tips that will help you manage your time effectively, so you can give your best whilst keeping one eye on your own sanity!