I’m generally a very positive person, but last week’s demands just about killed my positivity. The Mac issues I mentioned turned out to be a crashed hard drive. There were definitely some things to be thankful for (that I had backups of almost everything; that the software I bought arrived fairly speedily and recovered most of what I didn’t have backed up; that I have my laptop and wasn’t dead in the water); it just added significant stress to an already-stressful week, partially due to the time required to work on the problem, partially because I’m just not as comfortable coding on my laptop, and a lot of it just the mental stress of juggling everything.

Still not quite done with the Mac joys. I have the backup on an external hard drive but still need to replace the dead one to get up and running. Don’t know when I’ll find the time to do that! Feeling overwhelmed by that and all of the other “should do” tasks that are getting trampled by urgent ones.

The title of this posts pretty much sums up my struggles (in a positive way!). I have all of these opportunities that just need a tiny little push to turn into something, and I’m having a hard time pushing.

I’ve bought ad space but not sent in my ads; I have potential clients who are asking me to do work, and haven’t found time to reply yet; I have all the content done for my main site but haven’t put the design up to make it all accessible; I have all the makings in place for several new services I haven’t found time to promote.

Ugh.

What do you do when you feel like this?

Thinking back to what’s worked before (because I think that’s my best bet), I do better when I have a concrete list of steps; I don’t do well with ambiguity. So here’s what I’ll do today, before 5:20pm when I am leaving for music practice:

• Close all tabs and reboot my computer (if you think this sounds trivial, you don’t know how I use tabs…)
• Write a list of all known outstanding projects (both client and business development) and break them down into tasks
• Schedule those tasks
• Create my ads and send to Wendy
• Send out promised review copies of ebook
• Process all emails in my inbox (only 42!)

Looking at this list, it seems kind of pathetic, but my gut tells me to stop while it’s still manageable. No doubt this short and unimpressive list will keep me hopping!

Want to jump in yourself? Just leave a comment saying what you’re going to do today, or post on your own blog and leave a link.

The concept is simple: public commitment (which I call “obligation”) is a powerful motivator. I can harness this power for good by telling you all (okay, since this is my first post, “you all” might be a rather small group, but whatever!) what I’m going to accomplish, and then I’ll be more likely to do it.

Wendy frequently uses either penalties or rewards as additional motivators, but I’m feeling too overwhelmed to add anything else at this point, so we’ll see how a simple public declaration works for me, and adjust as needed.

This Monday

• I currently have 18 items on my to-do list (and an additional 7 already checked off, woohoo!). As you can imagine, that’s a lot of pressure, but they are all what Covey would call either “important-not-urgent” or “important-urgent”–no busy-work here. So completing this check list is what I commit to do for today.
• I also commit to update you on my progress before I go to bed.

Want to jump in yourself? Just leave a comment saying what you’re going to do today, or post on your own blog and leave a link.