Figure Out What to Do Next When You Have A Lot to Do | After the Brain Dump [Episode 310]

Thriving In Motherhood Podcast | Productivity, Planning, Family Systems, Time Management, Survival Mode, Mental Health, Vision

When you’ve lost momentum in every area of your life, and it feels overwhelming because there is so much to do, what do you do? Often, the answer is to do a brain dump—write everything you can possibly think of on a piece of paper to clear your head.

The problem is, what do you do after that? How do you actually gain the clarity you need to move forward?

This last week, I sat down and prayerfully asked that question, and a new process unfolded that made it very clear where to put my time and energy to start making progress on the things that really mattered most to me, even though we were still sliding between survival mode and re-entry.

I thought about making it fancy, but in the end, I just used a Think and Process page in the Thriving in Motherhood planner to complete this entire process.

Steps For Clarity When There is Too Much to Do:

1. Brain Dump

2. Cross anything off the list that isn’t actually really important right now

3. What on your list has a next action step that is 5 minutes or less?

4. What on your list is urgent?

5. What progress have you made on each item (one box for started, two boxes for progress has been made, and three boxes for nearly done)?

6. Transfer the 5-minute or less next action steps, urgent items, and nearly done items from your list onto your weekly plan.

For me, there were two next action steps, two urgent items, and two things I was nearly done with. This allowed me to get some quick wins and start to build momentum and bring excitement and joy back into everyday life.

Watch this week's episode of the podcast for an in-depth walkthrough of this process and what made my list.