10 Things to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed

Sometimes life overwhelms you with more things than you’re capable of handling.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and despite what superachievers say, you can’t add more with superhuman willpower. 

It’s stressful, demoralizing, and scary to have more things you need to do than time to do them in.

Or to have a huge mountain of tasks that seems like it will never be done.

This is something I have a lot of experience with, due to my background in tech startups.

I’m used to having some disastrous crisis every single day – sometimes five at once – while simultaneously doing the work of 8 people, developing new systems for rapidly growing companies that were inventing products and services nobody had ever done before, teaching myself how to do jobs way outside my area of expertise as I was doing them, and having to juggle the finances of companies that were perpetually running out of money.

I’m no stranger to a truly ridiculous amount of work being dumped on my head.

In twenty years of drinking from the firehose, I developed some strategies to avoid being overwhelmed.

Every individual is different. I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all advice. Some strategies may be more helpful for some people than others. I encourage you to pick and choose the ones that resonate with you.

1. Prioritize and pick one thing

You can only do one thing at a time.

Don’t worry about all the things you need to do.

Decide on one thing to do right now.

There are four aspects to consider to prioritize tasks you have to do: Urgency, importance, dependency, and difficulty.

Urgency is how time-sensitive a task is. Whether there’s a deadline, someone waiting on it, or something that gets worse the longer you wait.

Importance is how much the task truly matters.

Dependency is whether certain tasks need to be done before others. This is especially relevant if you’re working with other people or there’s a necessary time gap between tasks. For example, you need to wait a day for paint to dry before the next step. Or you need to e-mail your coworker, and won’t be able to move forward until she responds.

Then there’s how hard a task is. You might want to start with something easy to get a quick win and build momentum. Or you might want to eat the frog and get the hardest part out of the way. Know your own psychology and what would work better for you.

Consider these four factors, and pick one thing to do next. 

Then do it.

Don’t worry about putting your entire list of tasks in order. Just pick one thing.

When you finish that one thing, pick another thing.

An additional note:

A lot of self-help advice says to spend most of your time doing important but non-urgent tasks. That being proactive will help avoid situations where you have urgent tasks to worry about.

This is great if you can manage it. But for most people, that’s wildly unrealistic. 

And in many contexts, that advice is complete nonsense.

It doesn’t do any good to change your baby’s diaper in advance.

If you’re already feeling overwhelmed, this sort of advice will make you even more frustrated.

2. Eliminate or cancel less important tasks

While you’re prioritizing, question if the unimportant tasks need to be done at all.

What would be the consequences if you skipped them, or politely canceled them?

Likely nobody will notice if you miss that work meeting.

Is it a big deal if you skip the car wash?

Maybe learning French can wait until you’re less busy.

It’s okay to say no to requests and invites. Or to tell your friend you’re too busy to help him move.

Here’s a tactic I’ve used to eliminate wastes of time in the workplace:

When invited to pointless meetings or assigned work you know is useless, e-mail your boss saying:

“If I do this, I won’t be able to work on [some important, time-sensitive task.] Can you let me know which is the higher priority?”

Your boss is likely to tell you not to do the pointless thing. Or at least, push back the deadline to a time when you’re less stressed.

3. Just start doing things

All the planning, thinking, and worrying in the world won’t accomplish anything.

You can only move closer to your goals by doing things.

So jump in and start doing things.

Even if you don’t have any sort of plan, and haven’t prioritized.

Doing things is making progress.

It will help you understand the problem better, give you momentum, and move you toward your goal.

Each thing you do is one less thing hanging over your head.

Most importantly, it shows you it’s not so bad, and you’re able to do what you’re overwhelmed by.

4. Complete an easily accomplished task – even if it’s unrelated

If you’re overwhelmed by a huge project, it can be helpful to get moving and accomplish anything at all.

Even if it’s unrelated to what’s overwhelming you.

Do the dishes, fold clothes, walk your dog.

Pick a straightforward task you’re guaranteed to succeed at.

Accomplishing something will push away the frustration, and give you momentum to move onto harder things.

5. Ask for help, delegate, or hire someone

You aren’t alone in the world.

You don’t have to bear your burden alone.

It’s okay to ask for help.

It’s okay to delegate tasks to someone less busy.

And it’s okay to pay someone to do something for you. Even if you’re capable of doing it yourself.

Ask your spouse to do the chores or watch the kids while you’re busy with your project.

Bring in someone else at your company to share the workload.

Hire a professional to do your closet remodel. Or use Instacart for grocery shopping so you can focus on more important things.

Your friends, family, and coworkers all want you to succeed. They’ll be happy to help.

Your happiness and sanity are worth more than the numbers in your bank account. Businesses will relieve your stress in exchange for money. That’s what they’re there for.

6. Exercise self-care, and get care from others

When dealing with overwhelming situations, it’s important to take care of yourself.

Get enough sleep.

Sacrificing sleep to get more done just doesn’t work. When sleep-deprived, you take more time to accomplish less, at much lower quality, and are miserable the whole time.

If you’re energized by exercise, meditation, or naps, taking time for these can be a win overall.

(But if you’re not energized by these, don’t force yourself.)

Eat food that keeps your energy up, not food that makes you tired and lethargic.

Wear comfy clothes.

Snuggle with your pet.

Ask your partner or friends for hugs and supportive words.

Celebrate your wins.

Give yourself rewards.

7. Procrastinate

This will make self-help gurus gasp and drop their copy of Atomic Habits, but sometimes procrastination helps.

If you’re not in the right mental state to deal with things, it’s okay to push them off to tomorrow.

Chill out, watch some TV, read a book, hang with your family or friends, then go to bed early.

Maybe in the morning you’ll be in a better place.

I wouldn’t recommend this for time-sensitive issues where putting them off will make you more stressed.

And it’s not a great idea if you won’t be any better able to handle things tomorrow. 

If you keep procrastinating, it’s time to rethink what you’re doing.

But sometimes it’s okay to punt things to the next day for the sake of your sanity.

8. Put together a plan

Earlier, I suggested you only focus on one thing at a time.

An alternative is to lay out an entire plan. List the steps to accomplish your goal, in the order to do them.

For some people, knowing how to get from here to there makes it a lot less stressful.

For others, seeing a long list of things they still need to do makes it worse.

This is only helpful for the first group.

9. Imagine the worst-case scenario

Visualize the scenario where you don’t accomplish the tasks that are overwhelming you. What’s the absolute worst that could happen?

Either be realistic, or go over the top with ridiculous scenarios.

A realistic scenario is:

“If I don’t finish the TPS report, my boss will yell at me, I’ll get a bad performance review, then get passed over for that raise and promotion.”

An over-the-top scenario is:

“If I don’t finish the TPS report, my boss will make catastrophically bad decisions, leading to the company going bankrupt, setting off a chain of events that collapses the global economy, then a breakdown of civilization, and then aliens will invade and enslave humanity.”

This is helpful because visualizing these scenarios may take the teeth out of your anxieties.

Especially if you realize the worst-case-scenario isn’t that bad.

“If I don’t finish painting the shed, the shed will look kind of crappy.”

Of if you only come up with significant negative consequences when being ridiculous.

“If I don’t finish painting, all my friends will hate me for having a vaguely crappy looking shed, ostracize me, then I’ll die miserable and alone.”

A word of warning:

For some people, visualizing the worst-case-scenario adds to their anxiety. Especially when there really are significant negative consequences.

So this is another case where you should know yourself, and only do this if it will be helpful.

10. Ask if your overwhelm is self-imposed

Sometimes we can’t get away from what overwhelms us. At least not without radical life changes, like quitting your job and ditching civilization to be a hermit in the wilderness.

Other times, we’re only overwhelmed because of choices we’ve made, which we could easily change.

Maybe you’re being a perfectionist, and could do a simpler job.

Perhaps you’re struggling to meet a self-imposed deadline, when there’s no reason for that deadline.

Or you’ve decided to take on six projects at once, when some of them could wait until you’re less busy.

It could be you’re volunteering for the PTA, five community organizations, and are in six book clubs, on top of the urgent projects that are overwhelming you. You could simply say, “Hey, I’m a bit busy now. I’ll have to step away until I have some more free time.”

Maybe you’re overwhelmed by something you thought would be fun. But now that you’re doing it, it’s making you miserable instead. It’s perfectly fine to stop and chuck your half-finished hobby in the trash.

Conclusion

Being overwhelmed is something we all deal with.

COVID, quarantines, and the general divisiveness we experience online don’t help.

But hopefully these strategies will give you an easier time.

And remember, some of these strategies aren’t for everyone. Some of them will make certain types of people even more overwhelmed. So pick and choose the ones that will work best for you personally.

Please let me know what you found helpful, or if you have other techniques for when you get overwhelmed.

You can comment below, or reach me at @YourselfHelping on Twitter.