How do you handle overwhelm?

Well, I must say that I’m somewhat of an expert when it comes to overwhelm.

I’ve found that in my years of coaching people, that each of us has one or two things that we do, which gets in our way… it can be worrying, procrastinating, anger, guilt, jealousy… for me it’s overwhelm.

So I’ve studied overwhelm and how it works and I’ve been able to come up with a strategy for myself, which helps me to overcome it quickly and get moving forward again.

The Strategy

So, let’s look at what’s happening when we feel overwhelmed.

Overwhelm occurs when our mind is full things for us to do, that are all appearing important and urgent. We reach our limit. This has us feel like we can’t do it all and we don’t know where to start, which paralyses us. We stop and freeze.

To find our way out of overwhelm we have to undo what’s been done…

Here are the steps:

1. Take all of the things that are filling your mind, out!
2. Realise they’re not all equally important and urgent
3. Know what to do next
4. Take action

So, let’s explain each step of the strategy…

1 – Take the things that are filling your mind, out!

Whether you write it down on paper, or type into a computer, is up to you.

The key is to get it all out of your mind and in front of you, so you can work with it.

When you do this, you start to feel better because it’s not all in your mind anymore, you can actually see it out in front of you.

2 – Realise they’re not all important & urgent

When these things are in our mind they all appear equally important and urgent… and this is rarely the case.

Now you have a list of what was in your head, you get to decide the best way to prioritise them based on what they are, for you.

The key here is to organise them in such a way that you realise that they’re not all equally important and they don’t all have to be done right now!

Here are a few suggestions of how to organise your list, but you may have other ways that you want to use. Which is fine.

Time/Urgency – When?

The first is time and urgency.

Work down your list and ask yourself the question, “When does this need to be done?”

Sometimes it’s a date, sometimes it’s when another task is complete.

Either way you can begin to place things in time order.

As you determine the level of urgency of each item, you will be able to quickly see what has to be done now and what can be left for another day.

Importance – Why?

Next, you can determine how important each item is. Maybe give each item a number from 1-10.

This gives another way to decide what gets done and what does not.

Urgency & Importance

When you take the urgency AND importance of an item together, you can make some key decisions…

• What is urgent and important, rises to the top.
• What is not urgent, but important can be planned to be done at some point.
• What is urgent and not important, can be ignored or simply delegated.
• And finally, what is not urgent and not important, you can just delete!

Critical path – What?

An additional method I use is the critical path.

Which to me, simply means the minimum set of tasks or steps, that have to be completed to achieve the goal as efficiently as possible.

I find that I can get distracted by shiny new, interesting things that are not essential to the completion of my project and this keeps me focussed on what’s important.

3 – Know what to do next

Now you’ve prioritised your items, it should be easy to put them into a step by step plan.

First this, then that, then that.

Some tasks you can do in parallel, some are sequential, one after the other.

But, based on urgency and importance levels, you should be able to make a plan where you spread your workload out over time.

And the result will be, that at any one time you can clearly see what to do now, today.

And remember, it should not be 10 items for today!

At the start of your day, based on importance and urgency, choose 3 things to get done.

4 – Take action

The best cure for overwhelm is to start taking focussed action on an important task… and now you can do that with a clear mind, knowing you’ve planned out your work… so you can focus on the task at hand, safe in the knowledge that you’re doing the right thing, right now.

So that’s it for today. That’s overwhelm and how to overcome it!