Episode 105
Questions I Hear All the Time, Answered
There are certain questions I hear over and over. They come from podcast listeners, people on my email list, clients, and sometimes people I meet who learn what I do. Often, the question begins with something like, “I don’t know if this is a weird question, but...”
Usually, it isn’t weird at all. In fact, I have probably heard some version of it many times before.
These are the questions that keep coming up because they do not have obvious answers, or at least not the answers that most productivity advice gives you. If you have tried different planners, productivity techniques, apps, routines, or elaborate to-do lists and still find yourself struggling with the same things, the problem may not be that you have not found the perfect system yet.
Today, I want to answer three of the questions I hear most often. They all look a little different on the surface, but underneath, they have something important in common.
Question 1: Why Do I Feel Busy All Day but Never Seem to Move Forward on Anything Important?
From the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed, you are faced with decisions. Hundreds of them. The problem is that many of those decisions do not feel like decisions while you are making them.
Imagine waking up and looking at your phone. There is a notification about a 12-hour sale at your favorite store. You have been thinking about a pair of boots, so you decide to take a quick look. It will only take a few minutes.
When you finish, you get up to grab a cold drink. On the way, you notice that the kitchen is messy, so you straighten a few things up. Somewhere in there, you eventually get your drink. By the time you are finished, the day is underway, and you have not touched the thing you actually intended to do first.
You have also made dozens of decisions along the way, even though almost none of them felt like deliberate choices.
The same thing happens at work. Someone from accounting has a quick question, so you help. You return to the document you were working on and try to remember where you left off. Then you realize someone else needs to contribute to an upcoming meeting, so you decide to check in with them first. That conversation produces another task, and suddenly you are several steps removed from the work you originally intended to complete.
You have been working all day. You may even be exhausted. Yet the important thing you hoped to accomplish has barely moved.
When Reaction Mode Takes Over
I think of this as a nightmarish version of Crossy Road. You are simply trying to get from point A to point B, but things keep coming at you before you even reach the curb.
This is why starting the day with a giant to-do list does not necessarily solve the problem. What you need first is a clear idea of what actually matters.
Before the decisions start arriving, identify the two or three things that would make the day genuinely successful. These are not necessarily the only things you will do. They are the things you want to protect from everything else that will inevitably compete for your attention.
Once you know those priorities, you have a filter.
That filter helps when something new arrives and feels urgent. Some interruptions really do need immediate attention, but plenty of them can wait, be delegated, or even be ignored without anything terrible happening. Without a clear sense of your priorities, however, everything can feel equally important in the moment.
This is also why flexibility needs to be built into your day rather than treated as evidence that your plan failed. Unexpected things will happen. Leaving some margin gives you room to handle the things that genuinely need you without allowing every new request to derail the entire day.
Question 2: Why Can I Never Get Through My To-Do List?
Here is a reframe that may feel a little uncomfortable: Your to-do list may not be the right tool for what you are trying to accomplish.
A to-do list is essentially a collection of everything that could theoretically happen. The problem is that it grows much faster than it shrinks. Your inbox delivers new tasks without being asked. Your brain generates new ones. Other people contribute more. A five-minute conversation can add three new things to a list that was already too long.
It has never been easier to accumulate things to do.
If you do not have clarity about your priorities and your actual capacity, that list can also turn you into a fairly abusive boss to yourself. You keep demanding more, measuring your day by how many boxes you checked rather than whether you used your limited time and energy on the things that mattered most.
There is always more you could do. That does not mean you should do it all.
What If You Were Still Working This Way Five Years From Now?
Here is a question worth sitting with for a moment: If nothing changed and you were still working at this pace five years from now, how would you feel about that?
What would your life look like? What would your health look like? What would your relationships look like? Would you feel proud of how you had spent those five years, or would the thought of continuing this way make your stomach churn?
If your reaction to that question is uncomfortable, pay attention to it. That is useful information.
It does not necessarily mean that you need to become more disciplined, work harder, or finally discover the productivity system that will allow you to squeeze even more into a day. It may mean that you need to change the way you decide what gets your time and energy in the first place.
A shorter, more intentional list can make you far more effective than a long one. That is not because you are doing less for the sake of doing less. It is because you are directing more of your attention toward what actually matters.
The goal was never to finish the list. The goal was to do the right things.
Work With Your Actual Capacity
Instead of looking at everything that could be done, begin with what you realistically have the capacity to do today.
Maybe you have room for three meaningful tasks. Choose those three.
The rest of the list does not disappear. Those things can still be addressed tomorrow, later in the week, delegated to someone else, or reconsidered entirely. Today, however, those three priorities receive your full attention.
That focused attention is likely to produce better work than dividing yourself across 15 different items while feeling guilty about all the ones you have not finished.
Your capacity is not a moral judgment. It is simply information. The more accurately you understand it, the better decisions you can make about where your energy goes.
Question 3: How Do I Stop Feeling Too Overwhelmed to Get Started With Anything?
When you are overwhelmed, your first instinct may be to create a better plan. Before we talk about planning, however, there is something else worth doing first.
Take a breath. Stretch for a moment. Have a sip of water.
I mean that literally.
When overwhelm hits, your nervous system is involved. Your nervous system is constantly scanning your environment and trying to determine whether everything is okay. Telling it to calm down by handing it a longer to-do list is not particularly effective.
A physical reset does not have to take 20 minutes. Even 30 seconds can create enough space to help you think more clearly about what comes next.
Then I want you to remember something else: Every day is an experiment.
It is not a test. It is not a performance. You are trying something today and seeing what happens.
That framing matters because it removes some of the pressure to come up with the perfect plan before you begin. You do not have to know exactly how everything will work. You only need somewhere to start.
Start With Today's Capacity, Not Your Ideal Capacity
Begin by asking yourself what you actually have the capacity for today.
Not your capacity on an ideal Monday in January when you slept beautifully, nobody is sick, your calendar is clear, and every planet has somehow aligned in your favor. I mean your capacity today, given how you slept, what has already happened this morning, how you are feeling, and what the rest of the day requires from you.
Maybe you have capacity for three meaningful tasks. Maybe you have capacity for two. Perhaps today you genuinely have room for four.
Name it honestly and work with it rather than against it.
Then choose one task. Not three. Not the entire list. One.
Ask yourself, “What is the very first step?”
Then make that step smaller than you think it needs to be.
Make the First Step Almost Ridiculously Small
Suppose you have an application to complete and you hate paperwork. “Complete the application” is not your first step. That is the entire project.
Your first step is to pull up the application and see what information they need.
Once you do that, you will probably discover that the first few questions ask for your name, address, and contact information. Great. Start there.
You can also set a timer for 15 minutes, or whatever amount of time feels manageable, and promise yourself that you are allowed to stop when the timer goes off. That matters because it removes some of the open-ended dread around a task that feels as though it might consume your entire day.
Fifteen minutes has an ending. Fifteen minutes feels survivable.
Once you begin, something else may start working in your favor.
Why Starting Can Make Finishing Easier
There is a concept in psychology called the Zeigarnik effect, which describes our tendency to keep returning mentally to unfinished tasks. An open loop creates a certain amount of tension because your brain wants to close it.
Before you begin, the task may feel like an enormous, vague thing hovering over you. Once you have taken the first step, it becomes something specific that is already in progress.
That little bit of tension can actually become useful because it pulls you toward continuing.
Your brain may be more willing to return to an application where you have already filled in the first section than to an untouched application you have been avoiding for three weeks. The same can be true for the presentation where you have created one slide, the email where you have written the opening paragraph, or the closet where you have cleared one shelf.
When the timer goes off, take a moment to recognize what happened. Whatever you completed during those 15 minutes is progress. You have more than you had before you started.
That is how meaningful change is often built. Not through one enormous burst of motivation, but through small, consistent experiments that accumulate.
What These Three Questions Have in Common
Feeling busy without moving forward, never finishing your to-do list, and becoming too overwhelmed to start can seem like three different productivity problems. Underneath, though, they share much of the same foundation.
Things become easier to manage when you have clarity about what actually matters and a system flexible enough to protect it.
When you know your priorities, you have a filter for the constant stream of requests, interruptions, ideas, and opportunities competing for your attention. When you understand your capacity, you can stop planning for an imaginary version of yourself who has unlimited time and energy. When you make the first step small enough, you can stop waiting for overwhelm to disappear before you begin.
None of this requires you to become perfectly organized or productive every day. Remember, the day is an experiment. Some experiments work beautifully, and some give you useful information about what to try differently tomorrow.
Inside Prior 10, this is exactly the kind of work we practice: understanding your real capacity, choosing your priorities, and creating a way to move forward that does not require you to fight yourself all day long.
If these questions have been hitting a little close to home, enrollment for Prior 10 is open through Friday. You can find the link in the show notes.
And if today's episode simply gave you one useful idea to try, that's enough too. Choose one thing that matters, make the first step smaller than you think it needs to be, and see what happens.
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The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.