I'm a real life pinball machine.  I feel that little ball pinging around inside of me.  There are flashes of light competing for my attention, and I'm constantly pounding on the buttons that control the flippers to keep the ball from escaping the course.  There are times I can remain focused, keep my eye on the ball and keep it from being lost.  I feel proud of being in the groove and seeing my 'score' going up and up.  But just when it seems like I've figured out this game called life, somehow I level up, and now instead of one ball to keep track of, there are two.  And so it repeats until the pinballs have multiplied and become unmanageable and overwhelming.  As my stress level increases, I can feel them in my chest, and I have to remind myself to stop and breathe.  My head doesn't stop considering all of the demands and expectations.  They are ever present - even in my sleep.   I want to stop pounding the flippers and just let all of them slide, unopposed, down the chute. That would allow me to start a new game, a fresh one, where it's really possible to keep track of my responsibilities.

Rather than quit, we need to come up with strategies to make us better.  Here are four ideas to get you started:

1.  Recognize why you are overwhelmed
Are you always "on", always connected?  Are you saying yes too often?  Do you avoid delegating?  Do you over promise or set unrealistic deadlines?  If you answered yes to these, try disconnecting some of the time, saying no, sharing the load and giving yourself some margin!

2.  Remove distractions
When you try to do too much, it's easy to try to multi-task to get it all done.  When we try to do more than one thing at once, what we're really doing is building in distractions for ourselves.  Work on short bursts of real focus.  Try the Pomodoro Technique where you work without a break for a period of time, and then get up and away from your work for a short break time.   Turn off notifications or even (gasp) close your email and instant messaging programs for a while so you are not tempted to check for incoming messages.  If you work from home, designate an area that is your "office" and use that space only for working.

3.  Take a break
Take short breaks like described above during working hours, but also consider taking a longer break from some responsibilities.  It may be time to prune your schedule to allow for some free time in your week.  Scheduling time to do nothing does not mean you are a slacker!  Consider an actual vacation where you can really disconnect from your day to day responsibilities including the technology that ties you to them.

4. Practice 
Practice really does make perfect.  If there's something you want to accomplish, you have to get better over time.  Learn from your mistakes, and systematically improve.  Make lists, read books, seek advice from those who have been successful already.

I'm excited to share a very special post from my first guest blogger, Csaba Vadadi-Fulop from www.productivity95.com.   I met Csaba when we were both part of the 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity book launch team.  He has great content on his blog, and in this post he shares tips on remaining productive while parenting.

Productivity and Parenting 
By Csaba Vadadi-Fulop

When your baby is born, a lifelong odyssey begins. You quickly realize that you must harness your down time more than ever before. Maybe you experience a paradigm shift in your life in terms of how you perceive your world: you might be more selective in what's important and what isn't. Both happened to me.
 
You, however, can't prepare for having a newborn―no matter what people say. But you can make significant adjustments to your life both before and after the birth of your baby and that's the topic I want to discuss in this post.
 
By the end of this post, hopefully, you'll get valuable insight about how you can channel your life back into order.
 
 
Adjusting Your Lifestyle
 
It goes without saying that you'll likely develop sleep debt, exercise debt, and the like. What's less obvious, though, is that it's much more than time. It's about your space-time continuum. The arrival of a baby and the events downstream will consume your space and time in a non-linear fashion.
 
It's beyond the scope of this post to discuss nursing, psychology, time management, and the like. Nor am I capable of giving such advice. I just want to share with you how becoming a parent literally changed my life in terms of how I operate on a daily level.
 
First, it forced me to switch from the PC to a MacBook. I've flirted with the idea for years, but it was the birth of my baby when I realized that the PC simply consumes too much space, cables are in mesh, and I have less flexibility to work. The MacBook was a game-changer. I was able to work practically everywhere at any time with the comfort of a king.
 
Second, when I purchased my wireless headphones I quickly discovered that I won't miss my loudspeakers anymore. I can listen to inspiring podcasts or my favorite band and take care of my duties, simultaneously. Washing the dishes, taking out the garbage, lifting my dumbbells? No problem, I just put on my magic headphones―with my iPhone laying on the kitchen table (!)―and my favorite podcast is with me all the time, regardless of whether I'm in the bathroom, bedroom, or yard. And my baby would still be sleeping or wondering what the heck dad wears on his shiny head.
 
Luckily I switched to consuming eBooks a couple of years ago, and I can say it was a good deal. EBooks don't take up any place; they're sitting in the cloud (Kindle cloud, by the way). So I can reserve some shelves for the storybooks dedicated to my little baby.
 
I've been extraordinarily resistant to changes for years including those related to the above-mentioned (portable device, headphones, eBooks). I always had an excuse―be it finance, reluctance, or fear―preventing me from diving into new things. Having a child is a perfect time to say no to your reluctant self!
 
Let's discuss the tech side of all those changes a little bit...
 
 
Adjusting Your Techniques
 
I use Nozbe as my task manager that's highly flexible to keep my life in order. I created a Baby project in Nozbe to home tasks that are related to parenting. When my wife was in the hospital with our newborn, I made a grocery-like checklist in Nozbe to ensure that I buy and deliver to the hospital everything my new family needed.
 
It was a highly demanding period: the born of your baby is psychologically demanding itself; on top of that you're supposed to take care of a lot of things, including the certificates of your baby, among others. Nozbe was a great partner in this period, too.
 
Later on, I kept important deadlines in Nozbe about vaccination and the like.
 
I still have my Baby project with a traveling checklist, recurring tasks such as weight recording, and more. This project will never end. Maybe I’ll rename it to, say, "Parenting" for the next twenty years.
 
It's one thing that you keep your tasks in a trusted system, another thing is finding a system to organize your notes.
 
Evernote is the note-taking app that I use on a daily basis to record and keep my notes, clip articles, save my journal entries, and the list is almost endless. I keep a lot of parenting related stuff in Evernote: baby first aid guides, nursing guides, weight journal, notes from the pediatrician, consultation hours, screenshots of diapers and medications, and much more.
 
Keeping a record of the baby's weight is a must. I created automation on my iPhone with the Workflow app: each week when my wife and I are recording the baby's weight, I just push a button on my home screen, enter the weight, and it will automatically appear in my Evernote weight journal with the appropriate date and time.
 
Sounds good? I still have much to improve...
 
 
Future Commitments
 
There's always a place to improve and adjust your productivity system.
 
Selecting the clothes that I like the most is still ahead. The rest is best to go for a charity that will open up a lot of space in my wardrobe. But, again, it goes beyond space: it will free up mental space for me.
 
Integrating regular exercise into my weekly routine is another challenge: I want to fight off this challenge with immersing into different new sports and picking the one I like the most. Without feeling anticipation, it's hard to build a long-lasting habit.
 
It's my sincere hope that you got some ideas and motivation to adjust to dad life (or mom life). Parenting is a lifetime commitment; productivity is a never-ending journey: why not combine the two for multiple outcomes?