Everything Everywhere All At Once... constantly.

Burnout.?

Overload.?

Backlog.?

Hundreds of unopened emails.?

A full voicemail.?

Meetings from 8 AM to 5 PM.?

Sound familiar??

Everything. Everywhere. All At Once.?

The reason the movie “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” hits such a chord with so many of us is because it is so relatable.?

Especially after the COVID years…

…it feels like problems just seem to stack up. And keep stacking up.?

If you haven’t seen the movie, it follows Evelyn, the matriarch of a Chinese-American family, as she confronts dozens of problems at the same time.?

Tax issues, too many failing businesses, love and relationship struggles, and parental acceptance–just to name a few.?

When you stack all of these problems together, you are overburdening.?

Overburdening is the insatiable feeling of being completely overwhelmed and burned out, just like Evelyn is.?

We confront the same issues at work.?

When we stack our challenges at work, we become overwhelmed and start to lose sight of the reason we chose this work in the first place.?

When we lose sight of “the why”, we get consumed by the “Everything Bagel”.?

What is the “Everything Bagel”??

If you haven’t seen the movie, the “Everything Bagel” represents all the things in our lives that can suck out our energy.?

Think of the Dementors from Harry Potter.

At work, it’s hard not to feel the pressure of all of the things that happen at the same time.??

And sometimes, our personal lives can find themselves joining the stack at work.?

So, what can you do??

Separate each issue into its own specific category so you can attack each challenge one at a time.

Years ago, I worked with a forestry team who was attempting to capture and map every tree in the public right of way.??

This was a daunting task.??

Instead of trying to get it done in one summer, we began by addressing every work order and every activity the team performed.?

As the team worked throughout the city, they would capture each tree one at a time, as well as any nearby species that were easy to put into the system.??

By taking it one step at a time, we got all the trees into the system.?

It didn’t happen overnight, but we did it way faster than anyone thought we could.?

The lesson??

Cut the “Everything Bagel” into little pieces, and get through one piece at a time.?

Focus on eliminating the work, not just doing more work.?

How do you break your big problems down to smaller problems??

Look for “pulse points”. These are points where decisions can be made.

For the forestry project, it was each specific tree. If they had tried to attack the entire forest at the same time, they wouldn’t have been able to complete the project.?

When we take large issues and chunk them into manageable challenges, we have plenty of time to do both the laundry and the taxes.

Need help tackling a big project at your workplace? Drop me a line here.?

Actions speak louder than words.

Brian Elms

Changeagentstraining.com