5 Ways To Avoid Smorgasbord Syndrome

Life is just one big smorgasbord with all kinds of wonderful temptations to fill your time. Just like the “all you can eat buffet”, if you don’t pick and choose which commitments you make, you’ll find your plate overloaded and yourself feeling unwell. Life balance comes from not only setting boundaries around the things you don’t want to do, but also saying no to some of the fabulous things too. It’s not that you can’t have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.

Try these five ways to avoid overloading your plate:

1. Check your happiness factor.

Sometimes you don’t realize how far out of balance you are, until you wake up one day and realize you are exhausted and dissatisfied. To catch yourself sooner, create a little time to check in with yourself at the end of the day.

Ask yourself:
On a scale of 1 – 10, how happy am I today?
What choices do you need to make tomorrow to raise your happiness factor?

2. Monitor your time.

When people say they don’t have time for the most important things, it simply means that they are using their time on other stuff. Write down your key priorities in life – perhaps this includes your health, your spiritual practice, your relationships. Then monitor whether you spend your time first on these things rather than on other commitments. You can create a simple checklist for the week and keep track to see whether you honor these key priorities. If you are super busy but haven’t taken the time for the things that are most important to you, it’s time to do something different with your time.

3. Leave some white space in your schedule.

Life is wildly unpredictable. Unexpected things will most definitely pop up during the week. If you have not left some white space in your schedule to accommodate them, you will find yourself feeling overwhelmed. Henry Kissinger once said, “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.” Choosing to not schedule every available moment allows you some flexibility. And if the crisis doesn’t appear, you have more time available for your key priorities. nnn
4. Pause before saying yes.

It’s usually the unconscious choices that get us into trouble. You open your mouth and “Yes!” pops out before you have really taken the time to evaluate how this fits with your schedule and priorities. Before you say yes to a commitment or opportunity, stop and consider it carefully. Do you have currently have time available in your schedule for this? Are you willing to remove something from your plate to add this in? If the answer is no to these questions, then the answer is no to the commitment.

5. Assess the opportunity.

There are so many amazing opportunities that life brings us, we sometimes load up our plate because we don’t want to miss any of them. Before saying yes, do a little assessment. Is this is once in a lifetime opportunity. If it is, then it might be a good choice to take advantage of it even if your schedule is full. The key then is to remove something else from your schedule so that you can have the time and energy to fully participate and enjoy yourself. Many opportunities will still be there for the taking in the future if there is no room right now in your schedule.