one step at a time

When I walked into my apartment tonight, the first thing I thought was: there is so much to clean, and it's been a while since I have been home to attend to it.And it seems like a while since I had tidied things, so it started to look dismal. I decided to break things down into distinct steps: make the bed first (perhaps the hardest task), followed by the various books scattered here and there on the floor and desk; finally, organizing clothes for cleaning. At first, I felt somewhat heavy, thinking how long it would take to get it done. But over time, I chanted and it settled my mind a bit. And I noticed that when I stopped wanting the time to go by, things did get to be quite a bit easier.
    I begin to feel that the root of feeling overwhelmed is not about having time vs. not having enough time, or being busy vs. not being busy. I have come to feel that even when there is much to do, the mental attitude can be something like "one thing at a time." There is only one thing I need to pick up and put away in this moment, so it doesn't benefit me to contemplate each and every future moment. To do so is bound to make anyone feel overwhelmed or stressed. It's almost like imagining how much food I am going to eat over the next week or so, and losing my appetite just trying to contemplate all the quantities of food. Is there any sense in contemplating things in this way? Not really, unless I want to be turned off food or any activity altogether.
    The same thing can apply to reading. It has often been my habit as a student to have several books  being read in parallel, and I would pick and choose my reading based on necessity or perhaps general mood. But if I were to contemplate how many books I need to finish in a certain stretch of time, I completely lose my enjoyment of the books. Not only do I stop enjoying the books, but I also lose the sense of meaning from these books. It reminds me of how, when I was in elementary school, the librarian would try to motivate students to read by having them write down all the books they have read in a month. After a certain number, students get special prizes--a trip to Acapulco, or something like that. The librarian was smart in the sense that she was tapping into students' love of extrinsic rewards. But in another sense, trying to read for quantity rather than meaning is the fastest way to turn people off reading altogether! It becomes a chore of sorts, or even a contest, where we compete even with ourselves to see how many 'things' we can finish in a stretch of time. The problem here is that we lose the ability to simply be with anything, because we are biting off way more than we can chew.
    Of course, I don't think this is a simple solution that works in all cases. I just read something the other day that hit home to me: if we want to reduce how much we clean, we might want to reduce how much we buy in the first place. I found in my own experience that the fewer things I own, the easier it is to maintain my lifestyle and life in general. The same kind of thing applies to the mind..  If my mind is loaded with concepts, theories, philosophies and so on, it can get cluttered very quickly. And if I do a quick check of what I am thinking, I will find that many things are idle curiosities which come and go. They lack solidity, so why should I be entangled in these thoughts and theories?  I am trying to say, less is better, and it's a good reminder for me to try to be simpler in lifestyle when my mental habits become complicated. Quite simply, people need far less than they think they need to be satisfied and to function in the social world.