On my to do list this month was to listen to and review Marcia Francois’ eCourse: “Break Out of Overwhelm,” which was provided as a gift with purchase of her new book, Live Organised.

My month has continued to be jam-packed with critical tasks and the feeling of “overwhelm” is definitely there. It was even a bit overwhelming to think about listening to a seminar on coping with being overwhelmed! I knew that the seminar would likely require me to do something and I just wasn’t sure I even had the energy to do that.

However, since I committed in writing on this blog that this was one of my goals, I decided to just get started. It was late one evening and I thought I would just put the audio on and replay it later if necessary.

To my great surprise, this audio course was not overwhelming, was easy to comprehend, had a lot of interesting things to say and had easy steps to start the de-stressing process. It is just over an hour long.

While I won’t go into detail about what is in the seminar, here are the topics I found most interesting:

• 3 organizing personalities (how to tell which one you are, what to do to focus yourself for each type)
• The first super-simple thing you should do when you are feeling overwhelmed
• How to decide which expert sources you should consult for organization, time management, etc.

I started following her advice and I have to say it is working already. No, things are not perfect and I still have far too much to do but I do feel more control over my life and more calm.

A few things I learned from this experience that are not actually in the seminar are:

1) If you are seeking meaningful change in your life/organization/productivity, etc., get in the habit of reacting to good information (making a plan, asking a question, etc.) rather than just passively reading or listening. I am guilty of this too. If you subscribe to Ramit Sethi’s emails for example, he is always asking you to do something with his information. I believe that is really the key to seeing change. It doesn’t matter whether you “know” the information; what matters is whether you “use” it.

2) Marcia Francois is a fearless delegator, which makes her quite unique. I am curious to learn more about her delegating methods.

3) Professional/life coaching is something we should all think about doing. Today’s workplace simply doesn’t have time to help us become better at our jobs, move up to better things, identify knowledge gaps or help us plan for upcoming employment shifts. But just because the workplace doesn’t give it to us doesn’t mean we don’t need it. If you don’t take the time or have the skills yourself to sit down and think about your goals and talents once or twice a year, hiring someone to help you do it is a great idea.

What is the first thing you do when you feel overwhelmed? Have you benefitted from coaching? Please share in the comments.