Reduce overwhelm through chunking

The limits of working memory dictate that we can only focus on five to seven separate pieces of information at one time. Beyond that, it all starts turning into a blur.. which is why long strings of apparently unrelated information, or a long to do list, can feel so overwhelming.

But we can’t just whack our to do lists off at the roots, or only learn a fraction of what we are supposed to learn.

The solution is to group related items together, so that instead of say, 32 unrelated separate items, we end up with 4 groups of 8 items.

When staring down a long list of things that have been causing stress, it’s helpful to chunk the list into categories.

One of the first questions to ask is, what categories will be most useful?

 In case of a list of stressors, it makes sense to create action categories, such as:

Not only does creating categories shorten a long list into manageable segments, but it also suggests actions you can take to reduce the overall size of the list and cope with it better.

For a to do list, it helps to create action-based categories like “do”, “pay”, “buy”, and “call”.

That way you only have to DO a few different types of things… and  can easily make all the calls, or pay all the things that need paying, at one time.

What long lists of seemingly unrelated items are causing YOU stress right now? 

Whether it’s a holiday shopping list, a long to-do list for your business, or ALL THE THINGS you want to teach in your course, it can feel completely overwhelming to look at them all at once without having an effective structure to help you organize them.