Overcome Overwhelm and Reach Your Big Goals By Doing This

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Table of Contents

Podcast Description

Dive into how to overcome overwhelm as an entrepreneur! Whether you’re balancing family duties, business tasks, or personal aspirations, this episode has you covered with encouragement and actionable advice.

You’ll discover how to break down your goals into manageable steps and understand what task flows are, keeping your focus on those big picture objectives without getting bogged down by daily chaos.

Learn to craft a clear, actionable plan that aligns with your broader vision, keeping you motivated and productive even when life throws its curveballs. Let’s make this the year you stay on track and achieve your big goals!

Links Referenced in Episode:

▶ Taskflow Magic [Coming soon!]

▶ Productive Entrepreneurs Club

▶ Ep. 86: How to Break the Cycle of Starting and Never Finishing

Connect with me:

Website | Instagram

Episode Transcript

(Note: This is a formatted AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through, but is not an optimized blog post. Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

Episode Intro

Introduction

Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, your host of the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast, where I’m on a mission to help online entrepreneurs like you focus on all the right things and kiss overwhelm goodbye. Here, you’re going to learn strategies that will boost your productivity so you can scale your online business and impact lives sooner. It’s your time to shine. So let’s get started.

Hey, hey! Welcome back to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast. I’m really excited about the new year. I definitely feel the energy of fresh starts, resets, and the desire to do better for ourselves and our businesses this year. So I’m channeling that energy to build momentum for the rest of 2025. Today, we’re going to dive into how to stay focused on your big-picture goals this year without getting lost in the overwhelm.

Feeling Overwhelmed? You’re Not Alone

Let’s face it, it’s so common to feel overwhelmed at the start of the year, especially after coming back from the holiday break and feeling behind on all tasks. I’m raising my hand because this is absolutely me. I’ve been trying to juggle having my kids home from winter break, hosting holidays, spreading the magic of Christmas, managing daily mom and wife duties, running the business, and planning out the year. It’s a lot, so I totally get it. You might be in a similar boat, feeling overwhelmed because how are you already behind on so many things?

I just recorded episodes inside the Predictive Entrepreneurs Club for our monthly pep talks, which I usually have ready to go. I was just able to get that out, but there are so many things competing for our attention right now because it’s the start of the year.

In this episode, we’re going to not only talk about why staying on track is crucial but also give you a teaser on how Task Flow Magic can help make that happen a little easier with a clear, actionable plan.

Why Big-Picture Goals Matter

Let’s start by focusing on why staying focused on your big-picture goals really matters. Right now, many of us are in the goal-setting phase, setting big goals for ourselves. But as time goes on, after a few weeks, some of those goals might start to feel unrealistic or too far away, or maybe you’ve already fallen off the wagon. There is a danger in losing focus on your big-picture goals because you are easily distracted by all these other urgent tasks that feel urgent or maybe there are all these shiny objects that tell you, “Do this,” “Try that,” and all of that pulls the attention away from what your big-picture goal is, whether it’s your business goals or personal growth goals.

The Trap of Urgent Tasks and Shiny Objects

When you let yourself not only try to stay focused on your own goals but also get bogged down by all these tasks that feel urgent and are being pulled away by every shiny object that comes your way, it leads to burnout and makes you feel like you’re constantly chasing after things, which is so tiring.

Setting Clear and Realistic Goals

It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have big-picture goals at all. Absolutely set your big-picture goals because that’s what’s going to let you know where you’re heading. You can’t make plans when you don’t know your destination, so you need to define clear goals. This way, you can ensure that all the actions and steps you take are aligned with your broader vision. You really want to stay focused on what truly matters by prioritizing. You have to prioritize because you cannot do everything. We’re all ambitious—I know I am—but you need to be realistic about what you can actually get done in the time you have, considering all the circumstances and things at play.

Maintaining Motivation Amid Overwhelm

When you focus on these big-picture goals, it becomes a little easier to stay motivated, especially during tough times when everything feels overwhelming, because it’s a reminder to yourself to make sure that your current tasks are helping you reach your big goal or not. You have to be honest with yourself. Maybe all these tasks are actually helping you reach your bigger goal, but if not, your goal might be too broad and needs to be more specific.

From Goals to Actionable Plans

Now, I know about goal-setting; that’s a whole episode on its own, but let’s move forward and talk about how we can actually make these goals into plans, and not just plans, but breaking these plans down into less overwhelming tasks by using task flows. Here’s the problem: when you have a really large task or a big project or big goal, it becomes overwhelming because it’s not clear enough—it’s too broad. This can lead to procrastinating or completely abandoning the project altogether. Yes, I’ve done this before. It’s absolutely normal. But when that is all you’re doing, it becomes a problem. So you want to create task flows for these larger projects.

Understanding Task Flows

What is a task flow? It’s a clear step-by-step process that breaks down large tasks into smaller, actionable, manageable actions. I talk about task flows in more detail in the previous episode, so definitely go back and listen to that one if you haven’t yet. But to give you a brief summary here, task flows help prevent overwhelm because they offer the clarity you need by breaking down and helping you visualize that every small task is something you can complete. This helps you stay consistent and make forward progress on the larger task or project or goal you want to achieve.

Example: Launching a New Product

For example, if your big-picture goal is to launch a new product this year, that is your goal. To launch a new product, you need to break it down into specific, manageable steps like brainstorming the topic, creating an outline, designing assets (such as social media graphics, presentation slides, a logo), drafting the sales page copy, and designing the sales page. These are smaller steps within a much bigger project. Some steps on their own are a lot, like writing sales page copy is a pretty big project. That’s why people pay thousands of dollars to copywriters. If you’re a solopreneur trying to do it all, you absolutely need to break it down into task flows; otherwise, it’s going to get overwhelming.

Benefits of Implementing Task Flows

When you implement these task flows into your workflow, it helps you see all the things involved in the big project and makes you feel like you can tackle it in bite-sized portions of time. You don’t feel like you have to do it all at once, which helps prevent forgetting what you need to do next or having to remember to do this or that, which can lead to something breaking because you didn’t do it right the first time. It removes those feelings because otherwise, it’s like a huge mountain you’re trying to climb without knowing what the next task is. Each smaller step gets you closer to completing the bigger project at hand.

Overcoming Past Challenges with Task Flows

Now, I know what you might be thinking: “Lucy, I’ve already tried this before. I’ve tried creating this system to achieve my projects and tasks, and for some reason, it just doesn’t seem to work.” And I get it. There are a lot of entrepreneurs who are frustrated with productivity systems. But here comes the tough love: you might not be doing it right.

Common Reasons Productivity Systems Fail

There are many reasons why productivity systems fail. For one, there’s a lack of clarity. Many systems I’ve seen when working with clients are generic and too broad, so you can’t really understand what the goal is. Every system needs a specific goal. When I say a system, I’m talking about a collection of tasks, and I like to break it down using Trello. I absolutely love Trello. One Trello board is one system. I see a lot of people combining everything into as few Trello boards as possible, which makes it super overwhelming to know where you left off, what you need to do next, and what your goals are. There’s a lack of clarity there, and because of this, there might also be unrealistic expectations.

The Importance of Detailed Planning

For example, if your system or task is “Create a new course, launch a product,” and that’s the only task on your Trello board, you might feel like that’s not going to take long because it’s one task. But when you start breaking it down, you see it’s actually over 20 tasks. How are you going to get this done in one day? Maybe you can, but for a lot of us, we can’t. That’s not realistic. Because you’re not breaking it down into manageable steps, you’re thinking, “I can do that. It’s just one task.” Not realizing that this one task actually has a lot of smaller actions tied to it. So when you try to force yourself to complete that one task and wonder why you can’t get it done, it’s because you don’t know all the things you need to do until you’re actually doing them.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Maybe a week goes by because something came up in your personal life, and now you’re like, “Did I do this? Did I do that?” and you have to go back and check your system to see if you created the opt-in form or the automation. That has happened to me and to many people listening to this podcast. It’s normal, but it doesn’t have to happen, and it doesn’t have to be this way. That’s why systems fail: you’re not planning things accordingly with a detailed, actionable plan. It gets super easy to get stuck and overwhelmed by all the things you need to do and forget what needs to be done or whether you even did them already.

Introducing Task Flow Magic

That’s why task flows are so important. In a few weeks, I’m launching a brand new course called Task Flow Magic. This course is all about helping entrepreneurs create custom task flows that align with your specific business needs and goals. It’s not going to be generic systems. You’re going to create a workflow that works for you—one that allows you to stay organized, focused, and productive with realistic, actionable steps. I’m finally teaching the process I use to create task flows for myself and the method I used to create the templates, so you can do it for yourself. Here’s how Task Flow Magic is going to help you stay on track.

What Task Flow Magic Offers

Task Flow Magic is not just going to teach you the theory. It’s going to provide you with actionable steps that entrepreneurs like you can apply immediately to stay on track and get results. You will know exactly how to create these task flows from start to finish for every single project you take on. These are not going to be generic systems that continue to fail you day in and day out. You’ll be able to know exactly where you left off, what you’ve done, what needs to be done, and what you can do in small pockets of time. For many of us, we don’t have hours to sit at a desk in one setting—you get interrupted, you have to pick up kids, you have a day job. There are so many things. Being able to break down these tasks into smaller pockets of time is going to be so important and truly help you stay productive.

Closing Remarks / Recap

Stay tuned because more information is coming your way about this course. There’s going to be a presale period. If you’re listening to this in real time, you’ll have the opportunity to give feedback as I’m creating the course and influence the course contents before it’s even created. I can’t wait to share more information with you soon. Stay tuned—it will actually be available around the time of this episode, the next day or two. Definitely stay tuned.

Now, let’s quickly recap what we’ve talked about. First, staying focused on your big-picture goals is critical. Second, breaking down these overwhelming tasks into manageable steps and turning them into task flows is the key to making steady progress on your goals. Also, Task Flow Magic is right around the corner—it will teach you how to manage those hassles that keep you organized and productive even when all these tasks feel overwhelming.

If you are ready and interested in creating your own customized task flows that help you stay focused and on track, then you definitely want to stay tuned for the presale of Task Flow Magic coming soon. In the meantime, go ahead and join my email list. You can join my email list by signing up for my free private podcast—the link is in the show notes. I really want to help you make this the year you finally start to stay on track and achieve your big goals without the overwhelm. You got this! I believe in you. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.Thank you so much for listening to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast with me, Lucy Reyes. To view the full transcript and all the links mentioned in today’s episode, visit cheerstoproductivity.com/podcast. And before you go, make sure you follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening so that you know once the next productive chat is released. Talk soon, and cheers to your productivity and success!