Many of you may share my dilemma of multiple projects swirling around me. Some are ongoing – falling, perhaps, into the category of chores – and are easy to handle. Others are larger and sometimes sit over my head like big grey clouds. Decades ago, I discovered two excellent techniques for dealing with these clouds before they turn dark and start sending out lightening bolts. With thanks to Alan Laikein, author of How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, from whom these are adapted, here they are:

Procrastinate

No, that doesn’t really sound like a way to get things done – but it works.

I had been thinking about reducing the number of books that I own for a couple of years. It’s been important, but not important enough to actually do anything. In the last week, though, I felt like the books were closing in on me.  Still, I procrastinated. I woke up a couple of days ago, feeling that these books were going to suffocate me unless I did something and immediately began packing up books to donate or throw away. Couldn’t stop. There are five bags of books ready to go. There will probably be another five in the next couple of days.

I used the same technique with a book project. I wrote a good introduction and couldn’t get anything else written. Every time I opened the file, the simplest things distracted me. My Food Network addiction was out of control.

Still, I couldn’t write. Finally, I told myself that I didn’t have to – wasn’t going to – write. It took more months than I will admit, but, as with the book removal project, I woke up one day, fingers itching, mind racing, and began to write. I’m three chapters in now and unable to stop. Try it!

Punch Holes in It

Sometimes, a project just seems to grow and grow and grow. It becomes too huge to even think about. There doesn’t seem to be a good place to start or an order of events. This is when to use the Swiss Cheese approach.

Without necessarily looking at the overall flow of the project (the cheese), look at the overall plan and find small, easy-to-complete pieces. Punch out one of these and complete it. Keep doing these small pieces and watch this solid block begin to have holes in it, just like a chunk of Swiss cheese. When you have enough small chunks completed, you will easily be able to manage the big plan.

I’ve used the Swiss Cheese method to organize information when I have so much that I can’t make sense of it. I pick one small topic and pull out all the pieces that relate to that topic. I’ll do this for several topics before I look at the chunks and make sense of what’s going on.

Finally, when I’m feeling overwhelmed by any project, I am reminded of the story behind the title of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Her brother had procrastinated too long on a report about birds. With the deadline looming, he asked his father how he could ever get this done. “Bird by bird”, he replied, “bird by bird.”