Maintaining Focus in the Face of Chaos – 1st Key

The Holiday Season can be so joyfully chaotic, can’t it?  Parties and travel and family (with all the baggage that goes with that!).  For many performers there are also holiday gigs and holiday gift promotions to promote on top of that.  It can all be so overwhelming.  So many things to do, so many demands on your time.

Time management and project management systems are critical to your success at all times and I cover them elsewhere in the blog.  Very often, when faced with unusually busy times, all of our time management skills fly out the window. So, this series of 5 blog posts will answer the question – How do I maintain my focus and my sanity in the face of chaos?

5 Keys to Manage Chaos

1. Acknowledge the reality of your current circumstances
2. Take everything off the plate that you can
3. Ask for help
4. Manage your emotions and thoughts through the experience
5. Get the learning

Over the next week, I’ll be expanding on all 5 keys.  Here’s the first one:

You Current Circumstances

Sometimes the best thing you can do is just sit down and do a big brain dump:

• List all the things you have to do
• List all the things you want to do
• List all the things other people are expecting you to do
• List all the things you think you “should” do

While you’re at it, how about doing a brain dump of all the things you’re worrying about as well:

• List all the what ifs
• List all the Yeah buts
• List all the fears of what other people with think if you…

Just get them all out of your brain and onto the page (or computer screen or digital recorder).  Now ask yourself – what’s the truth?  What commitments have you actually made?  Which of the shoulds and which of the expectations of other people are real and which are assumed?  Which worries are really warnings you need to heed and which are the recurring messages you already know aren’t true.  If you can just empty all of that stuff out on the page and take a good clear look at it, I think you’ll find that it’s really not so bad and you can handle it.

What did you discover while doing this brain dump?   Please share with me in the comment section below.

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