The surprising way to get things done when you are busy and overwhelmed

When I was a student, one of my part time jobs was in a bar. I remember one night, it was Friday night, super busy and everyone was in a rush to get their drinks before they went to see their films and I was the only member of staff on.

People were losing their temper as they had been queueing and when I started the shift, there was a massive queue and people were shouting at me that there needed to be more staff on. I remember being near tears trying to explain that I knew that, but management had only rostered on one person and I honestly couldn't do anything about it, we had told them for months that it was an issue, but it made no difference, perhaps if they could write in or complain directly.

But that didn't help me there and then. It didn't help me with the fact that I was by myself and the queue was about 6 people deep all the way around this massive semi-circular bar.

I was feeling truly overwhelmed, panicky and I just saw a see of faces looking annoyed and angry and was feeling a mixture of anger at being placed in this situation and hopelessness, I had no idea how I would get through all these customers.

What I Ended Up Doing?

In the midst of the panic whilst setting up the till, focussed on some breathing exercises and a very light meditation and then I realised, whennever I panic and hurry, everything goes wrong (imagine leaving a beer glass to fill up and mistiming it so it spills everywhere). So rather than panic and hurry, I was going to slow down and focus.

Instead of trying to serve the whole pack in one hit, I was going to focus on serving them one at a time. I made it clear I was just going to work from left to right around the semi-circle and really focussed on listening to each order carefully, repeating it back and doing each order correctly (no shortcuts like items 2 and 7 that they recited were two different bottles of beer but get them both at the same time).

It felt like I was going slower than I should as I had this urge to rush through the orders and take shortcuts but each time I worked through that urge and kept breathing and trying to bring back that sense of calm and peace.

I was told afterwards that I served far more people in the same time shift than previous colleagues which surprised me, but I new I had done my very best, made no mistakes and had no accidents.

Changing The World

I have done so much volunteering for charities and trying to put together campaigns for other causes and I have discovered no matter what the context, this strategy works. When you try to speed up, do bulk things at once, which makes sense, you tend to get what a friend of mine described as "lots of wet balls of dough".

By this she means that if you are a baker prepreparing for the day and you get lots of ideas for so many different things you want to do, you can carry on going but never complete anything. But you are technically using the fastest technique by working all the dough first then batch cooking.

In reality, you end up with nothing. Instead, if you focus on one task through to completion, you elimiate having to do re-works. I discovered doing charity work, helping one person properly first time meant I changed the world for that one person rather than lots of work having no effect on a lot of people.

Over To You

Where in your life are you "too busy" to do something properly? Where can you think of a situation where you rushed and it ended up needing re-doing or taking longer because you were trying to multi-task?

I urge you next time to think about doing things one at a time next time and truly be present and involved in what you are doing in that moment, and you will find everything else will fit into place.

#rush #hurry #beingpresent