When You Have Too Much to Do, Stop and Do Less

Eventually, the list gets away from you.

You sit down ready to work, but nothing moves. Your brain stalls. You’re not even procrastinating. You’re just stuck. The list looks like a mountain, and instead of climbing it, you stare at it, waiting for something to change.

The anxiety and stress don’t come from the list itself. They come from the pressure we put on ourselves to catch up. That pressure builds, and the spiral begins.

When a game gets out of hand, no coach tells the team to score twenty runs at once. You just focus on getting one runner on base. Then the next. Same with parenting. If your kid is having a meltdown, firing off ten instructions only adds fuel to the fire. You pause. You breathe. You say one clear thing that works.

That’s how your to-do list should be treated too.

Start by accepting that it’s out of control. That’s the only thing you can actually control at that point – the acceptance. Then pick one important thing in each area of your life. One for work. One for home. One for your health. One for your people. Finish those with care. Then stop.

Do it again tomorrow.

You’ll move slower, but you’ll make fewer mistakes. Progress starts to build, not the frantic kind, but steady and grounded. Like a lineup stringing a few hits together or a parent creating calm in a storm.

You can’t undo what didn’t get done yesterday. All you get is the next play.

And if you’re behind, that just means you’re in the game. You’re busy because you care. Falling behind isn’t a failure. It’s part of the process. Everyone’s behind in something. No one is watching your list as closely as you are.

So take a breath. Get a base hit. Cross off one meaningful thing. Then close the book on the day.

That’s how you win over time.