How to Avoid Training Overwhelm

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You participate in some kind of training event….a conference, on-line summit, 2 day workshop, etc.

You leave the event with pages of notes and you are fired up and ready to do it ALL!

You get home.

You look at all your notes.

You get overwhelmed.

You are so overwhelmed you can’t figure out where to even start.

You don’t really implement anything you learned.

This happens all the time, friends.  If you can relate, don’t feel bad. You are not alone.

The key to avoiding training overwhelm and getting into action is all in how you prepare for the event and how you participate in the event.  Here are a few key strategies I use every time:

1. Before the event:  Establish ONE place and one place only for your note taking.  You  need to have all your notes from every session in one repository.
2. During the event:  As you attend each session, start with a fresh page for your notes.  As you listen, remember...there isn’t a test at the end.  Your goal is to write down key takeaways that will launch you into action...not statistics or data points.  
3. At the end of each session:  When each session is over, circle the top 3 takeaways and “rank” your session as follows: 
1. Want to implement immediately
2. Want to implement soon
3. Interesting but urgent
4. After the event:  Once the entire event is over, give your brain a good 24 hours to rest and finish processing all that you have learned.  Then, sit down and review your key takeaways and ranking.  You may find some of your “implement immediately” items are less interesting after a full review.  Take all of the items that are still a “want to implement immediately” and list them in priority order from top to bottom.

Here is the hard part.  Take the item at the top of the list and focus 100% on that.  Just that one thing.  Sit down and create an action plan for that one thing.  Then, get to work.

The key here is to focus your energy on one thing at a time.  When you go through this process of reviewing everything and then prioritizing #allthethings, you are relaxing that feeling of overwhelm by not knowing where to start.  Too often, people come back from events and either try to do 100 new things at once or just do nothing at all.  

Implementing new things takes time.  You are much better off doing one thing to completion than trying to do 10 things at once...and none of them get done well.  Once you feel comfortable with that one thing, then go back to your list and start tackling #2.  The results you get from completing each item will serve as your momentum to keep doing more!