'Tis the season for unfinished chores

The last minute rush for Christmas presents and dinner preparations is over and we float in the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day. With another three day weekend coming up and most businesses either closed or closing early, it’s like being in limbo for another week.

So, what happened to all of the 569 unfinished items that were on your to-do list Christmas Eve? Hopefully half of them are checked off or disregarded as irrelevant.

Now comes the new to-do list. Cleaning up after the holidays, putting away all the foofarah that we bring out for that one special day. The to-do list begins to grow again.

Logically, you’d think that when your to-do list is long, you would kick into high gear and barrel through the work knocking out item after item, but that isn’t what happens. The longer the list, the higher the panic, motivation tanks and the brain fogs over. Are you a weirdo? Maybe, but not because of the to-do list panic mode. Stress can arise when there are too many demands competing for a limited resource. You are the limited resource, with only 24 hours in the day. When life takes over, sometimes it seems impossible to take time to recharge your batteries and get it all done.

An article was recently published in the New York Times about this very subject. Apparently, being bogged down with so much to do that you can’t do anything, is an actual psychological phenomenon with a real name and bless us all, a cure. In this article that was written by Dana G. Smith, we are suffering from overwhelm freeze. The name certainly sounds accurate.

A professor at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders explains that we freeze in the face of an overwhelming to-do list for the same reason our ancestors froze in response to a stalking predator. Our bodies react to threat the same way, whether the threat is external or internal. Basically, the brain is so stressed by the thought of everything you probably won’t have time to do that your prefrontal cortex, which should be planning, organizing and generally orchestrating the show, just lies down and “plays possum”.

Although it is comforting to know that this is common enough to have its place in medical terminology, what now?

Is there advice for those of us that need to get our brain motivated again?

The usual stress reducing techniques are given as a good place to start. Deep breathing, take a walk, exercise and try to remind yourself that you are normal and human.

We’ve all heard the old adage, “How do you eat an elephant? Once bite at a time.” No matter the size of the elephant those individual bites should be so incredibly small that you can’t possibly stress about them. We all feel our blood pressure go up a few points when we think about the task of cleaning house, but it is much harder to get worked up about that task like “dust the TV” or vacuum the front hall.

Think about rewriting your list as if you’re giving instructions to a child that doesn’t want to do it, so you have be very specific. For activities that bring absolutely no joy, self bribery can help.

Spending 20 minutes doing the dishes with the promise of a 10 minute break to listen to a comedian on YouTube or read a magazine could get the ball rolling. When you’re making that to-do list, be sure to add in some fun stuff too.

The longer you let yourself stay frozen, the worse it’s going to get. Start small, give yourself a pat on the back when you complete even the smallest task. You might want to set a timer as well. That 20 minutes will fly by and you will have made progress. High Five!

 

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