YES, Yes You CAN!

“When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.” — Maya Angelou

Some days can be TRULY overwhelming!!!

I had a day like that today – which in all honesty, doesn’t happen to me very often, in fact I actually cannot remember when last I had a day where I felt so overwhelmed by my workload that I almost wanted to burst into tears – didn’t know whether to look up, down, left or right and as fast as I had cleared one query out of my inbox, I had another 10 waiting for me.

It was absolutely CRAZY!

I guess, I really felt the “heat on me” today - because my business is well known for exceptional service levels and very efficient turnaround times for production - and when there is a little bit of “lag” with processing orders it irritates me senseless. lol! True story!!!

Sometimes when you're overwhelmed by a situation - when you're in the darkest of darkness - that's when your priorities are reordered. - Phoebe Snow

Anybody that knows me well, will know that I am organised to a point of being pedantic (yes… VERY OCD this one! Hehe).

I suppose, in many ways this “attribute” can often be a little bit of a double edged sword in highly overloaded situations.

On the one hand it is a great advantage, as the “ploughing” of the mountain in front of you is always done in a very methodical and seamless manner, but on the other side of the coin it can also often put you at a disadvantage when the simple “sight” of so much going on in your inbox, almost causes your brain to short circuit momentarily. Lol

I struggled today, if am honest – but I suppose it was partially because I did not get a decent night’s sleep and as we all know… you generally aren’t firing on all cylinders when you are physically exhausted.

But it is important to “keep your head” in those moments.

Pull yourself, back towards yourself. Collect all the scattered pieces and put them back together.

ACCEPTANCE of what is humanly possible in a certain time frame is generally the first step in getting this right. You can only do as much as you can do, as fast and as efficiently as is possible. More than that is unrealistic, but we often put so much pressure on ourselves that we internally refuse to accept that fact – well such is the case for me anyway…

Short of being able to crack open a beer or a bottle of wine in the middle of your working day - accepting the above is the next best step to keeping your sanity and managing everything flying at you more efficiently lol.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself of my own advice too… and it was definitely one of those days for me today... lol.

“Start at the bottom Jayne” - those people have been waiting the longest.

“One thing at a time Jayne… one thing at a time”.

"BREATHE, Jayne... BREATHE!"

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard was “operate like a bank teller” - If you have ever studied a bank teller (well, a good one at any rate…) you will notice that they will not serve the next client waiting in the queue until they have completed the transaction for the client prior.

This is excellent advice, because it is a form of simplification which allows better focus. Now don’t take this COMPLETELY literally – there are always minor interruptions and a small level of multi-tasking required in any high pressured position, but it is learning to differentiate between the ones that simply MUST be dealt with at that specific second and the ones which CAN wait until you have completed the slightly larger task at hand.

I find this differentiation very self-explanatory but I have discovered that it is not as easy to many others as it is to me and people will constantly allow themselves to be interrupted by stuff which really could have waited for a few more minutes.

When you function like this, you get half the amount done, in double the time because you are trying to operate with 10 arms.

It does not work! – Not efficiently anyway! (my opinion!)

Get all the “quick” stuff out of the way – in order of priority and time sensitivity and then tackle the larger stuff, in the same order.

As almost impossible as my day felt today – I walked away with a clean inbox, still managed to catch my sons cricket match and was the spoilt with the news that he has no homework today (and ANY parent will know just what a good feeling that is lol – because when they have homework… WE have homework!)

So despite my rather high levels of anxiety this morning, knowing FULL WELL the kind of day that awaited me and the fact that I felt ill equipped to deal with it due to fatigue….

I did it all and I am still alive and kicking…

And even managed to find the time to share it with my favourite people ;)

So CHEERS to that - and to a HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE day!!!

I noticed every time I felt overwhelmed, I would hold my breath. I had to learn to stop, relax, and take long deep breaths, and within seconds I would feel more clear and ready to deal with the situation in a more loving way. - Gisele Bundchen

Until next time...

Much Love from Cape Town, South Africa xxx

#thealliance