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cutedoggosalad
1 1,901 M Hopeful Heart 1
PathStep 3 Compassion hearts155 Forum posts1 Forum upvotes2 Current upvotes2 Age GroupAdult Last activeOctober, 2026 Member sinceNovember 2, 2023
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Overwhelmed by lists of information
Anxiety Support / by cutedoggosalad
Last post
 July 13th, 2024
...See more hello, I was wondering if anyone else experienced this or had ways to deal with it. I regularly hear the advice to break up tasks into steps or write my thoughts into a list. However every time I do this, I end up getting overwhelmed by the amount of information I see all at once. I can’t focus on one item at a time, and if I leave and come back to the list I don’t really know where to pick up. I end up abandoning the list because I get extremely anxious whenever I look at it and/or I had a take such a long break from looking at it that information feels unorganized or out of date. It is frustrating because I will work so long to write out and organize all the information but end up not using it, then I get embarrassed by the many lists of things of work I abandoned and accumulated. It’s a cycle I don’t really know how to break. for example, I will make a list of all the things I need to prepare to apply for a job, but eventually start feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information rather than organized. I’ll take a break to do something else and when I get back to it I’ll see all the mistakes or things I need to improve in multiple items and won’t know where to start. Maybe I’ll try to do one thing but hit a roadblock, like not knowing who to address my email to or realizing it will take me even longer to fix a paragraph I wrote. Then the list of stuff to get done gets longer, etc… ive learned the most productive route for me is to have 1 random specific task to create something in 1 sitting, because I do well when I can think in my head what needs to be done from start to finish. The task can’t be from a list or the previous happens. sometimes I get motivation from knowing I can do 1 thing all at once but I don't always get motivated. And of course, not all tasks can be done in one go. all in all I get demotivated and my inner thoughts become very negative on myself. I really would like to figure out what works best for me to be the most productive, so I can have a go-to method rather than go through this anxious cycle. Thanks for reading, this is my first time posting.
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