There are 1 Billion websites in the world. And sometimes it feels like there’s about twice as many resources for how to be awesome at freelancing, make six figures or more, or “4-hour workweek” your hair so you never have to use a brush or gel again.
In some ways, this offers us freelancers a world of plenty. There’s always a better way to invoice or an easier way to pitch a new client. But the reality of having a limitless supply of new, exciting information at your fingertips everyday? It’s paralyzing.
You only have so much time in a week. You only have so many mouse clicks in a day. And you can only read so fast.
You only have so much time in a week. You only have so many mouse clicks in a day. And you can only read so fast.
If you aren’t very careful about how you spend your time (and what you sign up for in your inbox), information overwhelm creep into your daily habits and prevent you from getting any work done at all.
And worse yet? Information overwhelm will make you miss out on the truly useful and actionable information that’s out there!
I’m not here to recommend any course or communities in particular, but I do have advice for handling the overwhelm so you don’t go bat crap insane (like I was feeling toward the end of summer this year).
1. Pick three communities and ignore the rest of them.
This is a random number, but it feels right to me. You don’t have fifteen hundred eyes and you only have 24 hours in a day. You can’t read everything, download everything, or take every course. You also can’t follow up with everyone and build a close relationship with everyone (if you think you can, you’re likely not being genuine about it).
It makes much more sense to pick three communities with leaders that resonate with you the most (and that might be filed with potential clients, potential peers, or whatever) and stake your flag.
I get it. Picking three in a million will be difficult. But think of the upside. Limiting your time investment means you’ll develop deeper, more personal relationships because you’re engaging, not lurking. This also means people within these communities will recognize you and what you do, rather than being 1 in a million of the faces they see throughout the day.
Find a blog you love with a voice that speaks to how you see the world and how you want to run your business. Focus on personality, tone, and values. Choose leaders who meet your aspirational goals (such as monthly income, independence, or level of confidence) not your personality goals (“I wish I could be as sassy as she is, it’s so entertaining!”). This will help you find other like-minded freelancers and writers who will be easy to connect with on a personal level.
The rest of the communities? Unsubscribe. Leave the group. Stop commenting.
The blogs that don’t sync with you? Unsubscribe. Leave the group. Stop commenting.
Now that’s not to say you aren’t reading a good blog post now and then or sharing the crap out of everything on Twitter. But when it comes to day to day engagement and investment, you have your big three and that’s that.
Use the least-stressful social media account you have (for me, that’s Twitter) and follow EVERYONE. That way you still see new promotions or popular posts and ideas as they come up, but it’s not distracting you from important work in your inbox.
2. Get old school (and offline) with handwritten note-taking.
Besides stuffing up your inbox, information overwhelm often fills your brain and computer with digital fluff. After a while, it’s hard to tell one promotion from another, let alone which ones you’ve read and which you haven’t.
Fight that feeling by taking handwritten notes, sharing the information with one other person, and deleting the information when you’re done.
Take handwritten notes, share the information with one other person, and delete the information when you’re done.
Stop clicking and signing up for things will-nilly, promising yourself “I’ll get to it later” while it clutters up your inbox and your subconscious. When you sign up for a new program or club, download everything you need and read it immediately, taking real, live handwritten notes for the important stuff.
Not only will this help you declutter in the long run (no saving weeks and weeks of 1 by 1 emails from prominent thought leaders), but you will also get more out of what you download immediately.
Just the other day I rediscovered the art of handwritten notes while going through a free email course I’d been meaning to read for ages. I took one full page front and back (see pic) and now I swear this stuff is ingrained in my brain! I understand it more than the times I read it quickly in my email, and the emails are cleared out of my inbox.
Sharing it with one person before I delete it (if it’s good!) further instills the knowledge in my mind and gives me an opportunity to help two people: the person who wrote the item as well as the person I forward it to.
3. Review your “doing” ratio.
The deepest problem of overwhelm is that you’re overwhelmed. You have so much information…and very little time or energy to implement whatever you read about or learn.
Take a minute to think of all the crap you’ve signed up for in the life of your time online. How much of it have you actually implemented? When I consider the hundreds of eBooks, courses, books, blogs, and downloads I’ve ever looked at, the reality of what has effected real change in my business or writing is very, very small. Like, maybe 4 or 5 things I could really point to (and I list them on the resources page).
Slow your roll. Stop signing up for things unless you plan to do them immediately.
Slow your roll. Stop signing up for things unless you plan to do them immediately.
This might seem really uncomfortable at first. But when you sign up for 5 new things each week (without completing the 5 things from last week) you’re floating in a sea of knowledge. It lubes up your mental grip too much to make any progress at all.
When you sign up for these things, you’re basically saying “I’m going to watch these opportunities fly by while I feel too overwhelmed to do anything about them.” Instead, sign up only for things you can get a grip on right away. Try them out, take handwritten notes, and then unsubscribe if it doesn’t resonate with you within a week.
I will still try new things, read new blogs, and download new PDFs, but I do it now with a shrewd and firm look at what I will actually implement. If I’m the third email in and it’s not something I stop what I’m doing to implement, I unsubscribe.
4. Take time off.
I don’t want to reiterate the whole post here, but taking time off — essentially giving yourself LESS time to do work — will help you fight overwhelm.
Taking time off — giving yourself less time to do work — will help you fight overwhelm.
Listen, I could check email All. Day. Even when I have inbox zero (which I strive for at all times) there’s more I could send and more I could follow up with. This kind of work expands according to how much time you give it.
So if you give it less time — by getting away from your computer and not working more often — you will work less, produce more, and be less stressed. You will essentially capture and control the work you’re supposed to do within the cage of a few hours and, voila, the end of overwhelm. If you don’t know how to say “No,” it’s a valuable skill to learn. Check out Nick Reese’s blog post with three simple scripts for declining questions and invitations.
Putting It Into Practice: “Underwhelming” Your Business Habits
There’s so many ways to feel overwhelm, so the solution is a little scattered. Here’s a way to get started:
First, take inventory of all the educational and influential things you follow:
- Sign up for https://unroll.me/ and take a look at everything you’re subscribed to.
- Look at your feed reader and count the business-related blogs you read
- Look in your “Read later” file on your computer, email, drop box, Google Drive or wherever you keep it
- Pull up your list of “must read books to buy on Amazon” or “What to put on hold from the library”
Then mercilessly cut and slash things you know aren’t worth your time. Straight up delete files from your computer and blogs from your feed reader. File-wise, organize everything truly worth your time into one place.
Then schedule out the following underwhelming activities:
- Networking time throughout the week to build relationships in the three communities you decide to engage in.
- Reading days each week where you can systematically walk through these items, implement and note-take on them, throughout the rest of the month.
- Book-per-week or book-per-month reading schedule of all those books you’ve been meaning to read.
This schedule will have less on it. It will seem like you aren’t accomplishing much at all. But when you make time to actually go through a small list of things to read and then you actually read those things… you’ve done more than anyone “planning to read 30+ books this month.”
The End of Overwhelm
How many years have I spent trying to read “ALL THE BOOKS!” instead of just one book? And how many books could I have read if I focused on one at a time?
How much time have I spent reading through Facebook freelancer group messages, yet not engaging or making friends in those groups because I’m too busy lurking?
It’s time to stop this nonsense. So, for me, this means I am going to put time in my calendar this week to finish How to Get People to Do Stuff by Susan Weinschenk, a business book that has been on my Kindle, half-read, for six months. I’m also going to leave the one group I lurk in (because it’s just not a good values fit for me) and engage more in the two groups I like.