Takeaway: It’s possible to catch up on tasks without working longer hours. My go-to strategies for feeling less overwhelmed at work: list your current projects, shift or tackle deadlines when possible, block dedicated work time in your calendar, minimize chronic stress, and schedule time for your mind to wander. Estimated Reading Time: 2 minute, 56s.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, you are not alone. The news of the world aside, we all go through busy and stressful periods in our work and lives.
If this is you, I’ll cut right to the chase with this article. Here’s a short list of strategies I use to combat being overwhelmed when I’m at capacity with my work—without just working longer hours.
- List your current projects. When I feel like I’ve reached my limit with work, I almost always spend more time planning. Start by listing every project you’re in the middle of. By doing this, you’ll likely find that no two items on your list are equally important or urgent. Prioritization is wildly valuable during busy times, and stepping back from less essential tasks during crunch times is crucial. After listing out all of my projects, I see if there are any less meaningful or essential tasks I can delegate or drop.
- Beat back deadlines however you can. After writing your list of projects, consider how close the deadline for each is to see if you will be able to get it done. Consider how much time, attention, and energy you must dedicate to the projects. If you have a shortage of any of these three ingredients—which can be expected when you’re feeling overwhelmed—try to shift a few deadlines, or think about whether it will be worthwhile to hunker down for a few extra, focused hours to get them done. Sometimes, I decide to spend less time on projects that won’t provide as much return.
- Block off time in your calendar. After determining which projects are the most important and urgent, schedule precisely when you will work on them. Dedicating blocks of time to specific projects allows you to make more significant progress on them.
- Reduce chronic stress however you can. As I’ve written about before, on this website and in my book on calm, chronic stress is what causes burnout. For this reason, during stressful times, I cut back on stress however I can—including by reading less news and not checking social media. Believe it or not, we tend to many stressful things (like these) by choice—including when we don’t have to.
- Schedule scatterfocus time. Scatterfocus is what I call deliberate mind wandering. On the surface, mind wandering sounds like a waste of time, especially if you’re busy. But research suggests the opposite. When our mind wanders, we think about our goals 14x as often as when we’re focused. Intentionality matters more when we’re at capacity because not all projects on our list are created equal. On top of this, scatterfocus lets your mind recharge (which makes you more productive later) and gives you the mental space to generate more ideas.
- Decide whether you should work longer hours after minimizing your workload. When at capacity, a combination of the five strategies above lets me get things under control without working longer hours around 90% of the time. But if I don’t have the time to get everything done and I figure it’s worthwhile to work longer hours, I’ll do it.
- Keep in mind that a large workload is a significant contributor to burnout. If you’re feeling some combination of exhausted, unproductive, and cynical—the three characteristics of burnout—try cutting back on how much work you have, however you can.
Regardless, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, the strategies above can help!
