Today I am sharing a recent podcast episode from Modern MLM (if you aren’t subscribed you should jump on over and give it a listen). In this episode, I talked about how to deal with overwhelm and how to sort and sift through all of the information you’re getting.

While there may be many reasons today we are going to focus on one of them specifically and that is information overload and drowning in your to-do list. Sound familiar? One of the big culprits is that you have all of this information and you don’t know where to turn. You can go on Google and learn just about everything. It’s true, right? You could go learn how to cut a little girl’s hair. Yup. I had to do that because my three-year-old cut her own hair and I had to learn how to cut a Bob. I found it on YouTube. There’s so much information out there.

It’s a blessing and a curse, right? Because there is so much information and we have so many voices talking to us- it can make it really hard to cut through everything. Especially when you’re just starting out and you’re searching everywhere for the right information for you.

Before we can get into the steps to dealing with overwhelm, I need us to take a little bit of a step back. We need to know two very important things.

Define Your Goals

The first thing you need to do is decide what your goals are. Are you looking to grow a following on Instagram? Are you looking to grow a following on Pinterest and blogging? Are you looking to dominate YouTube? You need to know exactly what your goals are.

Maybe right now you are doing in-person parties and in one year you would like to stop doing in-person and have all of your sales be online. That’s a very clear goal and has a path.

So where’s that online business going to be from? Is it going to be from Instagram? Is it going to be from your blog? Is it going to be from YouTube or your Facebook group?  Make sure you have clearly defined where that business is going to be from as well.

Maybe you are wondering which platform you will be successful on?  To answer that I want you to think about a couple of things:

• I want you to think about where you are right now.
• I want to think about the skills you have.
• I want you to think of the time of life.
• I want you to think about where your audience is.
• I want you to think about which platform is best for you.

What does this all look like? If you want to build a community, then create a Facebook group. If you are really good on camera, want to do tutorials and you want to teach people step-by-step, then YouTube is a really great place to be. If you want to use Pinterest and blogging and you’d like to write and take pictures and connect that way, then blogging is for you. If you want to be on Instagram and be social and really get to know and interact and collaborate with other people, then Instagram is a great place to be.

Let’s Talk Real Life

I’m going to tell you a little bit about me. I know that I should be on YouTube. It’s a really great platform. That’s where a lot of people are searching, but I know in my stage of life right now, it’s not feasible. Do I want to add it soon? Absolutely. But right now, all of the elements have to be right for me to be videoing:

• It has to be the right time of day.
• There has to be good natural light.
• I need to have my makeup on and look good.
• My three-year-old and other kids need to be occupied.

So for me, right now that is really hard to make happen. Does this mean it couldn’t be done? No, but I know that my audience right now, you are people who are trying to gather all of this information and I know that it’s very easy for me to slip away for 15, 20 minutes and record a podcast and I don’t have to be ready. I don’t have to prep as far as looking good or lighting. I can work at seven o’clock at night. So the lighting wasn’t good at, it doesn’t matter. So podcasting really works for me right now because it fits where I am in my life, my gifts and talents. It’s also thinking about my audience. My audience who likes to listen to podcasts because they’re being educated. So that is one easy way to figure out exactly which platform and what your goals should be. You need to know your goals before you start the three-step overwhelm process.

Choose Your Sources

Number two is to choose your sources. A lot of times you might go to Pinterest, for example, to start looking for information. It’s a great research tool and place to start but Pinterest opens you up to so many different sources and then you click on one article with, and then you read it and you want to implement it without really researching who that person is, how their business is structured, if it’s similar to yours or if this will work for you and that’s where you start getting overwhelmed. Too much information can be overwhelming.

I would recommend finding someone who will help you reach your goals. Maybe they have been there and/or are helping other people like you get there. Find someone who is very similar to you and could help you reach your goals. Then don’t listen to everybody because everybody is going to tell you about different things. Find a few trusted sources and stick with them. I hope I am a trusted source for you. That is my goal. I want to be there for you to help you build an online brand. That’s what I’m here for. So I hope you choose a few trusted sources. Once you have that in place, you can default to them because you can trust them and have been with them a while. You can, you trust their judgment and trust where they’ve been.

Three Steps To Fight Overwhelm

All right, so that is before my three steps to overcoming overwhelm. I needed you to know that part. It was a little bit longer, but I feel like it was important. So let’s talk about my three steps to overwhelm. These are things I actually do and is what I’ve done for years. If you are feeling overwhelmed and you have all of these things that you know you “have to do” and you’re panicked and then you’re paralyzed what should you do?

Step One

The first thing that you need to do is get out a piece of paper, an actual piece of paper and a pen and I want you to just list everything. List everything that you feel like you need to do. List anything that you even want to do or think you should do. I want you to just write it all out. Write it all down. Just get it out, girl. Get. It. Out.

Step Two

Then what I want you to do is once you have that list we’re going to filter it. We’re going to put these into categories. Circle the NEED to do. For example; you probably want to respond to customers. Maybe you want to create a social media plan. I don’t know what you want to do, but I’m just guessing. You want to do those things that you need to do to keep your business going. Maybe you have a goal for 10 color matches if you are in a makeup business or maybe you have a goal to send free samples of another product. Whatever is going to help you get to your bigger goals. Circle all of the things that you need to do.

Next, I want you to underline the things that would be nice if you did. Then I want you to go through and just put a line through all of the things that you don’t really need to do right now. These are things that if you didn’t do these for one or two months, you’d be fine. So that’s step number two.

Step Three

I want you to get a new clean sheet of paper. Make a list of the things that you need to do in order of importance for your business. Make sure to leave some space, maybe two or three lines. Then I like to keep a list of things that I want to do, the ones that you put a line through, I would go through and think which ones of these are the goals that I would like to do within the next month. Then I will bring them over to my list. So what you should have now is a list in order of importance of things that you need to do. And then once those get done, you can move on to the list in order of importance of things you would like to do. Then you also have underneath that, a short list of goals you’d like to do in the next few months.

Now, why is this so helpful? It keeps you very intentional with your time. What this process is going to do is that when you have time to sit down you don’t even need to think about what to do because you have already thought about it. I have five kids, so sometimes all I have is 20 minutes and you know what? I can accomplish one thing in those 20 minutes. There is a little bit of magic in that because you’ve already thought about it. You’re ready to go and you can get stuff done.

Let’s Review

Before you can stop overwhelm, you need to know your goals. Next, find your trusted sources. Then there are the three steps to overcoming overwhelm.

• A list, a huge brain dump of all the things you think that you need to do to, should do, want to do.
• Next, you are going to filter it with the circle, underline or line through it.
• Then you’re going to turn the page over or start a whole new to-do list and rank or prioritize each item.

Step number one, brain dump everything. Step number two, I want you to filter it through the lens of what do I need to do, what do I want to do and what doesn’t need to get done. Step number three, prioritize it.

Bonus Tip to Fight Overwhelm

If you want to be a super student with a gold star sticker, sometimes I will guess how much time something is going to take. For example, if I’m going to schedule out my Facebook posts for my group. I know that takes me about 45 minutes, so I will just write that next to the item. Then I know that my Instagram planning could take 20 minutes, and so on. What that will help me do is that if I sit down and think “oh, I have an hour, I’m just going to bust out this Facebook group planning”. See how that is a beautiful thing? You can just really change your whole work time, especially if you have short times to work and especially if you have interruptions and things like that.

I hope this is able to help you fight overwhelm. Thank you for being here and being a part of my community! Before you go, I also have a little gift to you. One of the things that I know you might be wasting your time on and that you likely feel stressed about is, knowing exactly what to post on Instagram. So I wanted to give you my Instagram planning guide for free because I love you. Feel free to share this post with your upline, your downline, and on Instagram. Thank you for sharing it! I love hearing or seeing in stories. It makes me absolutely over the moon. So if you do that, will you tag me at I Am Michelle Gifford and at Modern MLM.

 

How do you battle overwhelm?