Keep scope small to avoid overwhelm.
When I was a kid, I visited Colonial Williamsburg with my parents. I remember seeing the horse-drawn carriages and being absolutely mesmerized by the animals' beauty and power.
But something troubled me. I saw these big leather harnesses with cups limiting the horses' vision on the animals' heads.
Incensed, I turned to my dad for answers. "Why aren't they letting the horses see normal?!" I spouted in childish rage.
I had and still have the thought that my dad knows everything, and he didn't let me down with this question, either. He explained to me that the cups were called blinders and that they were designed to help horses focus on what's immediately in front of them. The blinders weren't there to limit the horses' experience; on the contrary, they were there to help them, blocking out all the little kids, dogs, and other distractions that might otherwise spook them.
Ever since, when I have to focus on something immediately ahead of me, whether physically or on my to-do list, I tell myself, "Blinders on."
That's my way of giving myself permission to focus on the task at hand and to let the distractions and the other pulls of the world slip away, even if just for a little while.
Over the years, I've adapted it for time management, too.
Blinders On: Managing Scope
The reason that literal blinders work for horses and figurative ones do for humans is because, in both cases, they limit scope. They keep us focused only on what we need to think about right then and there.
There are always thoughts, worries, to-dos, concerns, and more on the horizon. If you can see the full view of that landscape at all times, it's no wonder you get overwhelmed and stop dead in your tracks.
But blinders free you of that weight and free up the cognitive space that was spent on worrying and pre-planning and what-ifing for the task at hand.
How to Put Your Blinders On
For champion worriers like myself, putting your figurative blinders on is tough. It requires conscious effort to keep all the other thoughts and concerns at bay.
I find it's most helpful for me to start with something really small and put my blinders on for everything but that one small step.
For example, I know that proofreading a 10 page paper usually takes me about two hours. It's very, very rare that I have two uninterrupted hours in my day, so I can quickly become overwhelmed with the thought of this task. That's when I know blinders will help.
Instead of thinking about the whole paper, I focus on just a small piece. If I only have a few minutes, I may tell myself I'm only responsible for the first paragraph right then and there; I don't have to worry about the rest of it yet. If I have a little more time on my hands, I might broaden my scope slightly to the first page, but I rarely go above this--the key is to keep what you focus on small and comfortably manageable.
Keeping Blinders On
Remember that conscious effort I talked about for putting blinders on? For the worrywarts among us, maintaining blinders may also take conscious effort.
If I feel my focus starting to wander to other things, especially things I'm worried about, I might tell myself, "I'm only responsible for this right now," or, "My blinders are still on," or, "It's not time to worry about that yet." Sometimes, if I'm really struggling, I physically mimic the cups I saw on those horses all those years ago with my hands, literally limiting my sight to what is directly in front of me until I can get my thoughts back in line.
The sayings and actions are simple, but they allow me to give myself the permission to have the luxury of focusing on just this one item without the scope of my thoughts creeping up on me and getting me back into a state of overwhelm.
Your own mantras may be different, but having something you can physically say or do to disrupt the thoughts that are becoming distractions is incredibly helpful.
Combining Chunking and Blinders
I've written previously about using chunking to break big tasks into bite-sized pieces. Using the "blinders on" idea in conjunction with this creates a powerful one-two punch to knock out procrastination.
A bunch of bite-sized pieces considered together can still feel overwhelming. If you've already got your task broken into smaller pieces and give yourself permission to just focus on the first one instead of the sum that they create, overcoming that initial inertia becomes significantly easier.