3 Questions That Will Change Everything
In last month’s email I shared the foundation to overcoming overwhelm. If you can’t recall, towards the end of that email, I talked about approaching your thoughts with compassionate curiosity whenever you’re experiencing overwhelm.Whenever you’re stuck in overwhelm, everything seems to hold the same weight, which only makes it harder to prioritize and take action.
Today, I’m going to give you 3 questions you can ask yourself that will help you get unstuck and help you know where to start.
- What will my executive or supervisor request or require next? Not only will this question give you an understanding of what you should handle next, it will also serve to align you with your exec’s priorities.
- What is important and not merely urgent? As assistants we like to be helpful. Helping others with their “urgent” tasks can undermine your effectiveness in getting truly important tasks done. It is okay to refer your colleague to another resource, offer a reasonable timeline for your help, or give a well placed, “no”.
- What can wait, be delegated, or scrapped altogether? You might be feeling anxious about your workload but instead of prioritizing or strategizing, you try to take care of requests as they hit your plate. This causes your job to feel like an endless game of whack-a-mole. What’s worse? Higher priority projects become afterthoughts. This question can ground you to what’s truly important.
Few things are as emergent as we make them out to be. These questions are my guideposts when it comes to prioritizing and taking action on needle moving tasks and projects.
Take a breath. You’ve got this!
To learn more about Annie, please visit her website: WholeAssistant.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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