Overwhelmed at work? Here is what you can do and how your team and your manager can support you!

Work has become increasingly complex and demanding over the last decade and many employees (and managers) feel constantly overwhelmed – a feeling of whatever you accomplish is not enough.

The good news is that there are some key strategies available to you and your team. And your manager can do a lot about it too. Actually, they will be able to perform upstream interventions to prevent the feeling of overwhelm in the first place.

Let’s look at the different areas one by one.

What you can do

The first thing to know is that overwhelm is not a bad feeling, but it is a warning sign from your body that you need to slow down, rest, and take a break. Learn to recognize when you are starting to feel overwhelmed and use this feeling as a signal to pause and refresh yourself. Doing a little breathing can go a long way…

If you feel overwhelmed, breathe to calm you and release the tensions. If you are worried about something coming up or you are caught up in something that already happened, breathe, it will bring you back to the present. If you are moving too fast, breathe. It will remind you to slow down and enjoy life more. Breathe and enjoy each moment of this life. They are too fleeting and few to waste.

Leo Babauta

You can find more refreshment ideas in my recent LinkedIn article .

Some more quick and easy to implement tips…

Concentrate on what is in front of you and don’t get overwhelmed by the remaining tasks on your list and the feelings that usually come with it (e.g., being discouraged, frustrated, etc.). Choose your battles: when you give up on doing everything, you can actually complete something. The first step is to let go of FOMO, the fear of missing out on something important, which will drive you to check your emails, Facebook, or Twitter account too often, or saying yes to too much which leads to constant overload. Put aside all distractions to make space for your important task. And remember, the best in life isn’t somewhere else, it’s right where you are, at this moment.

If you struggle, be patient. Pushing through is very stressful and usually provides mediocre results. If you can wait, trust better time for this task will come. Your new mantra should be “Less force, more flow”.

Understand the success formula. Remember, people usually think, the more success they have, the happier they will be. But they got it all wrong. It is actually the other way around: the happier you are, the more successful you will be. So, take time out for happiness and self-care, the rest will come.

Don’t deal with your hobbies the same way you deal with work. Remember, the feeling of overwhelm can also come from other parts of your life. For instance, I am a passionate geocacher, but initially I treated this hobby like work by trying to be as efficient as possible and by finding all these geocaches in rapid time. This increased my stress level, and it didn’t relax me at all. Hence, I finally changed my goal and now use geocaching to bring me to fascinating places and bring me rather joy than results.

When the feeling of being overwhelmed persist after you have implemented some of the quick tips above, then maybe additional mindfulness and self-awareness practices can help you.

Stay curious a bit longer. Essentially this means staying with the feeling of being overwhelmed a bit longer; not trying to make it go away immediately, just staying a bit more curious and exploring with tender interest what’s happening. Note, this is not an intellectual practice. So, don’t ruminate or try to control or manipulate. Tara Brach calls this the RAIN experience , where RAIN stands for: Recognize what is going on, Allow the experience to be there just as is, Investigate with interest and care, and Nurture yourself with self-compassion.

So, how do you actually do that? When you notice that you're feeling scattered, overwhelmed, or messy, tell yourself “Lets feel the chaos!”. And then pause, take a breath, and bring your attention to your bodily sensations. Stay with these sensations for a moment and ask questions like: “What am I actually feeling? Where does it manifest in my body? What most needs attention?”. And finally experiment to see which gesture of self-care is most helpful to you, maybe a mental whisper (“it’s ok!”) or placing your hand on your heart, etc.

This practice will help you to actually recognize what is going on, allow you to slow down and to zoom out. The pressure to solve, getting it right, or to perform is lifted and hence the grip of overwhelm will loosen.

Meditate. If you already practice breath meditation, then you can expand it by breathing in the antidote of whatever you are feeling. For instance, if you feel “anxiety”, then you could breathe in “confidence” or “trust in the process”. This could give you instant relief. A brief session could look like: Begin by getting comfortable, take a moment to sit down, your feet on the ground, spine straight, relax and enjoy the moment of stillness. Take a few deep breaths and feel how you become calmer, allow your thoughts to come and go. And now with the next inbreath imagine taking in whatever positive feeling you need (e.g., relief, loving kindness for yourself, happiness, confidence, positive energy, trust, etc.) and with the next outbreath let go of your stress. Repeat this for a couple more breaths. Breathing in positivity and breathing out “let go”.

Recognize the efficiency trap. You need to understand that it is impossible to accomplish everything on your to-do list and even if you do, new tasks, new emails will pop-up all the time. You will never get it all done. There is no time management or productivity trick that make you so effective that you will get everything done. Embrace your limits, get rid of the belief that you get everything done and instead focus on the few things that count.

Understand how you operate. Tasha Eurich (“Insight”, 2017) has discovered that although 95% of people think they are self-aware, only 10 to 15% actually are. But knowing who you are, how you operate, and what triggers you is the most important step in preventing the feeling of overwhelm. It has much more to do with Being than with Doing (that is actually why we are called human beings not human doings…).

If your standard answer to “How are you?” is “Busy?” you may need to ask yourself, if the things that keep you busy are actually the things that keep you from real progress. When you are busy and putting in long hours, is this your only way to feel important or worthy? If you answer all emails within 30 minutes, or if you take on small, easy to complete tasks, is this because you feel more (false) control over your time? If you try to do even more in the same time, is this because you avoid the hard choices that need to be made?

Slow down to speed up and invest in your self-awareness to understand how you operate, what triggers you, and who you would like to be.

How your team can support you

We all face challenges every day, at work and in our personal lives. Resilience is the ability to overcome these, to bounce back, maintain our wellbeing and still keep moving forward.

This not only works on an individual level, but it is also important that we build our resilience together as a team, making sure that we support each other and lift each other up when times are tough.

Develop a team commitment. One way in developing team resilience is to develop a team commitment by asking the team “What practical actions could we take to become more resilient as a team and how can we support us better?”. Best to focus on very practical ideas that are realistic to implement, the things we would like to start, but also the things we would like to stop. The most useful ideas/actions will form your team commitment. Review these on an ongoing basis to check how you are doing against them and if anything needs to be added or deleted.

Please find below an example from my team.

How managers can help

First, managers need to acknowledge the fact that being overwhelmed is more than just an employee problem. It’s an organizational problem that requires an organizational solution.

When asking employees, they cite most often unsustainable workload as an organizational cause, besides insufficient acknowledgement for efforts and perceived lack of control – all issues a manager can help with.

Adjust workload. As a manager ensure that workload is adjusted to the employee situation (e.g., childcare, pandemic, etc.) and your direct report has the flexibility where to work from (office, remote) and how they structure their day.

Maximize purpose. Give your employees a sense of purpose, which amongst other benefits fosters resilience and perseverance. This means connect their work to the bigger picture and ensure they understand how they are of service to the world.

Keep energy up. Encourage real weekends and holidays and give your employees enough time to disconnect, rest, recharge, and to focus on other aspects of life. Expand your wellness program by provide free meditation or yoga classes or free licenses for a mediation app, etc. Another example comes from the German auto manufacturer Daimler, who has implemented a “Mail on Holiday” policy that autodeletes an employee’s incoming emails while on vacation so they can fully disconnect, without fearing an overflowing inbox when they return.

I hope these tips work for you. Please take good care for yourself, take breaks often, and rest.

Leave a comment of what you are experiencing in your journey and any additional tips you have.

Please contact me personally, if you would like to learn more, or implement any of these tips in your organization.

Volker Hack is an Executive Director at one of the largest Contract Research Organizations and dedicated to Improve Health. He is an advocate for incorporating mindfulness into the work life.