Ever had overload paralysis?

I have. That's when you have so much to do you can't get yourself to do anything. In fact, in a dizzying act of unexplainable dumbness, on occasion when I have been overwhelmed with stuff to do, I've actually checked my e-mail. Yep. I've willingly sought out a place where in all likelihood more work will land in my lap. And I hadn't even been drinking.

Too much to do and not enough time to do it, blah blah blah. We've all been there. So how do we laugh in the face of inertia and get moving? Here are some ideas, in no particular order.

• Make a list of all the stuff you have to do. Get it out of your head and put it on paper. Like David Allen says, "You can't be confortable not doing something unless you know what it is you're not doing." Just write and write and write until you get it all out. No filtering. I don't care if you never look at the list again (But you will. You won't be able to stop yourself). It's just better to get it out of your head.
• Set a timer and do something, anything, for ten minutes. The rule is you have to stick to that one task for the whole ten minutes. No jumping around from task to task.
• Call someone who can give you verbal support or a kick in the butt -- whichever works best for you. It's best to have these kinds of people briefed and in the wings for occasions such as this.
• Think about how awful it feels to have all this stuff to do staring you in the face. Think how much more awful it will feel if all this stuff plus some is still staring you in the face 24 hours from now. Be OK with some level of progress.

Remember -- and I mean this in the most positive, uplifting kind of way -- we're going to die and still have stuff on our to do lists. Don't let it kill you.