Why it's so hard to get anything done

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but it seems like the more things that you have to do, the harder it is to do pretty much anything. Like, you have this long list of tasks and responsibilities that seems to be growing longer and longer and longer. As it grows in size, you also kind of get paralyzed and intimidated by it. Even just thinking about the list gives you a mini panic attack.

As you mentally go through this list, you think to yourself, "Man, I don't really need to do any of these things like right now, right? I can probably get away with playing a little bit of video games, a little bit of Apex because nothing's due right this second." The thing is, you're probably right. Most things on that list you don't need to do right this second. But the problem is, the longer this list gets, the more it subconsciously affects your well-being and pretty much every aspect of your life.

You're not able to fall asleep as fast as you once did. Maybe it's graduated into full-blown insomnia. Maybe you're plagued with anxious thoughts like, "How the hell am I going to get all this stuff done? What if I don't get any of it done? Will I be living on the streets?" Maybe your entire life has been plagued by the fact that you can never seem to just sit down and do work, ever. You always have a large backlog of things that you need to do, and you are always treading water.

Maybe you've looked around at your friends and co-workers and wondered, "How come other people seem to be actually able to do stuff? Is there something wrong with me?" So I'm making this video because those sorts of feelings are what has punctuated my life since birth. I know what it's like to always have something due or overdue constantly. It's one of the worst feelings in the world when you're stressed about this monumental to-do list that you have.

It's even difficult to enjoy social outings because subconsciously you know that you really shouldn't be there; you should be tackling this list of responsibilities. It's like a knife in your back that's slowly being twisted as you fake laugh at the jokes that people make around you. It's not fun. Luckily, though, I've managed to turn myself into a relatively productive human being who can actually tackle the mountain of stuff without feeling completely overwhelmed.

So in this video, I want to share with you guys my main strategy for tackling that mountain of stuff that we have to do and actually gain some traction in our lives. Okay, so what's going on here? How do we end up in this situation? Usually, the reason why we end up with a mountain of things that we need to do that we feel overwhelmed by is because, naturally, life presents itself with tasks and responsibilities that we have to do. There's no getting around that, and these tasks need to either be done immediately or sometime in the not-too-distant future.

If the task isn't utterly urgent, what we tend to do is put it on our backlog of things. It's this list that I'm talking about. We say, "Oh, we don't have to deal with it right now. Let's just put it on our to-do list, and we will tackle it sometime in the future." But this in itself is super problematic because almost everything in life doesn't need to be tackled right this second. Very few things are immediately urgent and require our absolute attention right this second.

This means that 99% of every task that we get we put on our backlog. Since life just naturally dishes out these responsibilities, we can almost form a graph that shows that as time passes, more and more tasks and responsibilities start to accrue. There's also another graph that's happening simultaneously that says, "The more and more tasks that we have to do, the more stress we feel."

And there's another graph that goes, "The more stressed out we are about our current situation, the more unpleasant the thought of dealing with that situation becomes." We have two more left: the more unpleasant the thought of doing anything about our situation becomes, the more likely we are to escape from doing anything about it. And finally, the more likely we are to escape from doing anything about it, the less likely we are to actually do anything about it.

Basically, the more time goes on without dealing with our situation, the less likely we are to deal with it anyways, and it just becomes this horrible feedback loop. So right about now, you're thinking, "Oh, his solution is probably to just do the things before they accrue, do tasks right away as soon as you get them," and that's actually a great idea. But that's not what this video is about.

You know, that's what my mom would always tell me, and she's actually right. You should just do tasks pretty much immediately after getting them; don't let stuff build up, basically. But that doesn't really help us if we're already in hot water, if we're already absolutely drowning in things that we have to do in life and we need to get out of it.

And that's where I propose my Golden Rule: do less, not more. And you might be thinking to yourself right now, "Wow, that's a cute quote, Joey. You should put that on a poster." Unfortunately, that doesn't make any sense. Well, here's the thing: it doesn't really make much sense— but neither do we as humans. We didn't get into this situation if we made sense. If we followed perfect logic, we would just do things as they came to us.

We would finish off whatever task came up onto our desk, onto our lap like Santa Claus. We got to this situation because we're highly emotional and impulsive. When we're in emotional distress, we don't respond well to logical arguments; we respond well to momentum and feelings of perceived progress. So what we should do is take advantage of this fact and leverage our main weakness and turn it into a strength.

Every single day, we have at least one task that we know we need to do, and if we were to do that thing, all other tasks would be made easier or unnecessary. We need to find out what this task is in our lives, and we need to focus our entire being on completing this one thing. We need to pretend that nothing else exists.

With this extra focus, this unified focus, we will be able to complete this thing in record time. Once this one thing is completed, then we will feel motivated and energized to tackle more things in our lives. We will actually feel excited to keep that momentum going. But it's impossible to gain that momentum if we don't tackle that one thing and finish it every single day.

I'm pretty sure all of us can relate to this exact same situation. I'm pretty sure we've all engaged in escapism, avoiding that one thing that we have to do. We escape and escape and escape until the pressure builds and builds and builds. Maybe a deadline is approaching, and then we just snap out of it. We kind of go into survival mode and we just tackle that thing from start to finish, and we're done.

We are so incredibly relieved and inspired by the fact that we did that thing that we think to ourselves, "Holy smokes! Why don't I just go do more things in my life? That felt amazing!" And that's the exact emotion that we're trying to tap into. It's that feeling of having completed a very important thing and then leveraging that momentum to tackle more things.

I think we can only get to that point if we kind of put the blinders on and forget about literally everything else on our list. We use our emotional compass to figure out which thing has the most emotional resistance. What thing are we avoiding the most? That is likely to be— not guaranteed to be— the most important thing that you have to do in any given day.

For me, as I've talked about in other videos, that thing is writing. Writing, by far, has the most emotional resistance for me. I don't really like doing it, but once I have done it, then I have content to work with. I have something to film, I have something to edit, and I have something to upload. You know, writing is kind of the backbone of my entire YouTube career. It's the most important thing that I can do in any given day.

Okay, as long as I continue writing, I can continue YouTubing. Maybe your life is really consistent like mine or maybe it's super turbulent, and that one thing will change on a daily or weekly basis. You know, take what I'm saying and apply it directly to your life and your needs right now. You probably have something that you know you need to do, and you're really resisting doing it.

Maybe you've been resisting it for a long time. That's your one thing. Do not worry about anything else. Complete that thing, and once you complete that, the answer and the motivation and energy you need to complete everything else will be provided for you in droves. Putting the blinders on and forgetting every other task except the one thing also adds clarity to the overwhelm. It brings order to the chaos.

Our brain can stop birdshotting everywhere and thinking about a million things at once and getting super worried. Just calm your brain down, focus on completing the one thing. Take everything that you need to do and write it down. Write down every task that you can think of onto a piece of paper and try to identify the most important thing that you need to do.

Then what I want you to do is circle that one thing and scribble out everything else. Don't worry about anything else. Give yourself a mental vacation from everything else. Do that one thing; it's the only thing that exists. Whether you are excited to do it or not, it doesn't matter. Submit to it. Submit to just doing it, starting it, completing it.

Not a big deal; do it. 'Cause if you have to do it anyways, there's no point in getting all emotionally worked up about it. You just have mental clarity. You submit to the fact that you have to do it, you do it without resistance. You don't hype yourself up, and once you complete it, you will feel calmly empowered to restore more order into your life.

This video was inspired by "The One Thing" by Gary Keller. So if what I said really resonated with you and you want to take it a step further and dive a little deeper into this concept, then I highly recommend checking out the audiobook version using today's video sponsor, Audible. Because that's exactly how I read the book.

I've said it so many times these days. I consume so many more audiobooks than I read physical books, and that's because listening to audiobooks is just so easy. You can be going for a walk, you can be driving somewhere, you can be exercising, or cleaning your kitchen. It doesn't really matter; it's found time. You can be listening to an audiobook and getting smarter while you're doing the things that you do anyways on a day-to-day basis.

It's kind of a no-brainer. And for those of you who don't know, Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks, ranging from best sellers to celebrity memoirs to productivity self-improvement. Whatever you're into, it's probably on Audible. Every single month, they give you one credit, which you can spend on any audiobook of your choice, regardless of price. And you get to keep that audiobook forever.

If you ever cancel your subscription for any reason, you still keep your entire library of audiobooks. You can start listening right now with a free 30-day trial. Just click the link in the description below, go to audible.com/asap, people's time, and then my bald head gets shoved into people's homepages, helping them out, which also helps me out. So it's kind of a win-win for everybody involved.

And if you're lurking here and this is the thousandth time you've seen my face, consider subscribing and also checking out the second channel where we do more Q&A stuff. It's a little bit more casual, a little bit more memy, and we dive into just, I don’t know, fun chill laid-back content. Other than that, thank you so much for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video.

[Music] That was good! I don't know, have you ever noticed that? Have you ever noticed that the more things you need to do... I’m going to just do it. I'm uploading this!