I was so grateful to chat with Dr. Megan Melo about coaching in academic family medicine. Listen here.

2 weeks ago, we discussed procrastination and knowing if you are ready to change the pattern. Last week, we looked at how fear and perfectionism play into the cycle of procrastination.

This week we will talk about the 4 other feelings that lead to procrastination - Confusion, and Indecision, which are close cousins, Self-Doubt, and Overwhelm.  Those 4 feelings, like fear, are preceded by thoughts that cause them.  Our thoughts create our feelings which in turn...

So far, we’ve covered the first step of taming overwhelm - Being fully present with the person or task at hand and last week, and we covered Step 2 - List, prioritize, eliminate, delegate, and let go.  Now let’s move on to Step 3 - Taking small steps and letting go of perfection. 

If any of those priorities from step 2 seem large, break them down into small steps.  The first time I saw this principle in action, it resulted in several wins....

Last week, we covered the first lesson in Taming Overwhelm: be fully present with the person or task at hand. 

This week we are going to take it to the next step. When you feel like there is too much to do – start with a list. You have to get the things swirling in your head out of your mind and down on paper. Otherwise, your brain will jump around and offer that you have too much to do. So simply by listing them out on paper automatically lessons the burden. Strip them down to...

I don’t know a single physician who hasn’t felt overwhelmed at some time, and commonly, felt it very often.  For a long time, I was too busy keeping my own head above water to notice how/what others were doing to deal with it.  Surprisingly then, it was actually during a moment of overwhelm that I discovered another possible perspective.

A few weeks after the 2004 Tsunami that leveled much of Indonesia's Banda Aceh province, I worked with an NGO medical...