Are You Overwhelmed?

I was just exchanging private messages with one of my followers when I realized the rest of the community might benefit from what we've been discussing.

If you find yourself getting overwhelmed by everything you have to accomplish to succeed in internet marketing, this is the system that I use for my IM business and all large projects I set out to complete. It's produced great results for me over the years. Hopefully you find it just as useful.

Just for a little context, I had suggested creating a Kanban board to my follower. They had so much to accomplish that they were overwhelmed and had no idea where to start. They requested more details about Kanban boards, and this is the message that I sent them:

I've attached a picture of the Kanban board that I keep on the back of one of my bookshelves. It's pretty simple - just three columns:

• To-Do
• In Progress
• Completed

You break all larger tasks into smaller tasks. If you need to build a website, you have things like:

• Choose a niche
• Pick a domain
• Install Wordpress
• Update DNS
• Keyword Research
• "About" Page
• Etc...

Each one of those gets its own sticky note. I like to have mine physically in the room with me so that I can see it dwindling as I plow through all of the tasks I set for that day, and there's a slightly rewarding feeling whenever I move a note from "In Progress" to "Done!".

Arrange your day by moving any tasks from "To-Do" to "In Progress". Don't stop until you've completed all tasks that you set for that day.

This makes huge projects much easier to digest, and much less overwhelming. There are many ways that people talk about this:

• "Don't get too focused on the big picture"
  
• "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."
  
• "Mountains are moved one shovelful at a time."
  
• "Just take small steps."

These were all created because it's extremely overwhelming for most people to tackle big projects. You just have to find a system that works for you, break the tasks down into smaller steps, and focus on knocking those out one at a time. I still get VERY overwhelmed when I don't stop myself from thinking about the big picture.

"How am I going to get from where I am to what I ultimately envision this project to be?"

One step at a time, one bit at a time, and by not focusing on the big picture - just focusing on the smaller tasks that I know lead to the big picture.