Klaas Bals' Blog

Daniel Tenner writes:

"Once or twice a year, the same thing happens to me. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I feel overwhelmed with simply too many different things to do. It’s hard to juggle a lot of unrelated balls, and I inevitably let a couple fall at the beginning, before I finally re-learn what I learnt the last time this happened, and juggle the balls effectively again. Once that’s done, I feel efficient, happy, on top of things.

Why do I have to re-learn it all over again each time?"

I know that feeling very well. I maintain some notes in those cases: Things to remember when I feel stressed out, when I have the feeling I have too much to do or when I feel bad. Each time I think I've figured out why I felt that way, and as I'm writing things down, I assume that it won't happen anymore. Or if it does, it wouldn't catch me by surprise and I'd know what to do. And it works, in some cases, especially when it happened not too long before.

But occasionally it does catch me. And in those cases it brings along a big box of stress and bad feelings. I try to no pass these feelings on to other people, and I think (hope) I succeed in that to people working for me (directly or indirectly), but I know I don't towards my wife and other people in my nearest proximity (such as my boss/father in law). Thankfully they apparently learned how do deal with me in those cases, but that shouldn't stop me from trying to avoid it.

The method Daniel Tenner is proposing sounds interesting, and describes a solution to what I try to do every day. Working hard to keep various things going forward, and on top of that starting to work on new tasks or thinking about new ideas. And often it does feel as doing many things in parallel, so it may help to consciously serializing those tasks in 30 minute batches.

I'll try to remember it next time. And if I don't, please help me remind it.