How To Deal With An Overwhelming Backlog

I personally love having a list of my everyday tasks, it is my way of reminding myself of the things I have yet to do and the things that I accomplished in a day. I find it very satisfying to tick something off of my backlog and to call it a day once the list is empty.

However, some times, a list won’t help you at all. There are days where we just want to be a potato or days where there are just too many tasks to do that even if we list them out, it’s not going to help — I call them impossible days. During these occasions, we are more likely to feel overwhelmed with our very own list.

List, in a way, is our own expectations of ourselves. If we put too much expectation, we are just putting ourselves in our own dilemma. I’ve done this many times because I always tend to compete with myself and trust me, I learned to let go the hard way.

Here are some tips on how to properly handle your tasks — a better way of listing them:

• Burner list for miscellaneous
  A typical list is a list of get-it-done list, but if everything is a-must-do task, the list will never get cleared. You have to keep in mind that there are things that are out of your control and some things are more important than others. One way is to assess which ones are urgent, which ones are important, which ones are not. Having a burner list for miscellaneous tasks will help you focus on the more important ones. You have to remind yourself that when the get-it-done are finished, you can already breathe and call it a day. If you still have energy to pick something up from the burner list, then good for you! but make it optional.
• Revisit and replan your habits
  I am guilty, I am one of those people who likes to do everything (run, yoga, hiking, exercise, biking, name it!), gets overly excited to try it out, ends up failing, and never tries again. I am not saying it is a bad thing, explore all you want, you do you! But sometimes these habits, when left unaccomplished or just sleeping in the backlog for a long time, kill your morale. From time to time, revisit and replan these habits. Assess which habits you can or you’re willing to try again and the most important part is to determine which habits to let go.
• Stop making excuses and stop buying a new notebook or pen before you start
  “Oh, I’ll start this next week but first… I think I need a better table…” “…or a better pen?” “…perhaps a new notebook?”. It’s not the physical things you need, it is the mindset. It’s okay to set a schedule when to start fixing your list (or your life) but if you keep delaying because of a pen, it’s called procrastination.

I may be wrong in many ways here but these are the things I tried and works for me until now. Let me know if you agree or disagree or if you have better suggestions, feel free to let me know — always open to make things better ❤

Update after revisiting this post 2 years later — still works for me 👏