Writing online was supposed to bring balance.

Do you ever get overwhelmed?

Sometimes I get caught in a loop of guilt or feel I have let myself down. When that happens I try to step back and be honest with myself. And then I ask myself a few questions.

• Do I have too many things going on right now?

• What is the actual downside of my inaction?

• Does it make sense to turn the speed down?

Being constantly behind and writing under pressure is not necessarily what produces the best work.

If you learn to focus on what matters, you will be more happy with your work.

And you might even be able to create more.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to get stuck, trying to keep up with every goal you make for yourself.

I’m lying to myself.

For 242 days I posted daily on X to create a more balanced and peaceful life.

So far, I failed.

I spent a lot of time worrying about the consequences of my actions or inaction. When I worry, I run on autopilot. There are 5 main consequences of this:

• I focus on unimportant tasks

• I’m not satisfied with my writing

• I create too complicated processes

• I leave everything for the last minute

• I lose motivation to do what matters

The truth is, that worrying is a waste of time.

Time you can use to remove some of that worry from your life.

And when that happens, there are some quick ways where you can find more time.

Step 1: Find tasks to eliminate

When your focus is scattered on too many tasks, you’re not giving each task the attention it deserves.

It’s good to ask yourself these questions

• What tasks bring the most results?

• Am I wasting time on unimportant tasks?

• What would the consequence of my inaction be?

When you're honest about those things, you can better cut certain things out or motivate yourself to do what's most important.

Step 2: Find tasks to simplify

Often I find myself wasting a lot of time with an ineffective process.

The first question to ask yourself is:

• What activities are most time-consuming?

And then:

• Are there any of those time-consuming activities that could be done quickly?

Alternatively, simplify a process by eliminating unimportant steps.

Step 3: Find tasks to automate or delegate

The next question to ask yourself is:

• Are there any time-consuming tasks, I don’t need to do myself?

I’m too early in my journey to delegate stuff to other people. However, I am starting to think about hiring a designer on Fiverr to design some graphics for my course. Both because I’m not skilled at that part myself, and also that figuring it out would take me a lot of time.

You also need to remember that we live in the age of AI.

So, think about which tasks you do. And then think which one might be done by or sped up with the use of AI. It could be tasks such as:

• Idea generation

• Edit your content

• Target audience research

• Create rough outlines and drafts

• Summarize blog posts and articles

There are a lot of possibilities.

I hope you will use these steps to save yourself some time.

This could potentially save you hours of work every week.

I’ll talk to you again next week.

Peter