Have you experienced paralysis of action when the goal in front of you feels too big to make progress on? 

This is happening often in the current Coronavirus time of unprecedented uncertainty when there are a lot of things on people’s minds. People are overwhelmed, anxious, and have a hard time focusing. 

I am seeing this more often among people I coach and also among friends I talk to. 

Besides the current levels of anxiety, such overwhelm also happens when people have too many things on their plate and cannot decide what to work on next. This is the classic paradox of choice. If we have too many choices to make, we end up making none! Such an enormity of goal or excessive choices leads to procrastination. 

Here is a simple process you can follow to get unstuck from such a situation. 

Think small! 

One minute planning

Figure out a very small step you can take to make non-zero progress towards the big task. If you have too many things you are overwhelmed with, pick any one of them (does not matter which one), and figure out a small step towards that one. This “planning” phase should not take more than 1 minute. It is this quick. 

Five minute doing

Then take that step for the next 5 minutes. Just 5 minutes. Whatever you can do in the next 5 minutes, just do that. Don’t worry about optimality, or usefulness of what you are doing. It is only 5 minutes after all. 

And if you feel like stopping after 5 minutes, stop. If you don’t feel like stopping, that is okay too. But don’t “push” yourself beyond 5 minutes if you don’t feel like continuing. This is not about willpower.

This has worked so many times with people I work with, and with myself, that I am surprised how simple this is and how come I did not realize it earlier. 

Why does it work?

Okay, so what happens when you do this? Here are a few things. 

1. You actually make some real progress, albeit small, but still bigger than zero. 
2. You actually feel good about the non-zero progress. 
3. You feel motivated to take the next steps. Many times, the next step becomes clear as a result of taking the first small step. 

Why do we not do this? 

1. This is extremely simple, and we usually look for some involved solution. 
2. We want to make progress fast, and keep aiming too high. We end up not making progress when we are overwhelmed, but somehow, we don’t think of aiming low, and making steady progress. 

So, remember, when you are not in your elements, slow is the new fast. If you are overwhelmed with something, find a small action item that is so small that you can do it right away, and that does not require any willpower to do. If the action item takes 5 minutes to do, there is not a whole lot of willpower involved. And that is where you want to be when you are overwhelmed. 

For a similar idea, see the wisdom of reducing scope.