Are you suffering from overwhelm?

Aaargh, this is such an over-used word at the moment!??The world has always been complicated, there have always been difficult problems – so I’d like to suggest three types of overwhelm, and maybe a different, less ambiguous, word for each one:

1 – Awe

“The sight of the Niagara Falls was overwhelming, they were so huge”.???Or the sky scrapers of New York City.???Yes, I’ll allow that, and in fact it’s GOOD to go into nature and be overwhelmed by the stars in the desert or the ancient trees in a forest, or the size of a whale, or the mountains in Norway or Nepal.

2 – Stressed by something being too complicated to fully figure out immediately

This is normal in most work, and is part of life – if you’re not pushing the limits of your comfort zone occasionally then you’re not developing, and not attempting/achieving challenges.

It's a form of project management - or lack of!

So instead of being “overwhelmed” by driving in London, or the complexities of a new job, you could try the following:

• Get more information before you start the drive, or as soon as you start the new job.??The more information the better.
• Prepare as much as you can – maps, names of people, plans and back-up plans, maybe even a Gantt chart!
• Yes, plan the whole thing out, like a project, so you know where you’ll start and you know how long the whole thing will take, and that if you just follow your plan you’ll be OK.
• Talk with others – set up a mastermind group, see if others feel the same, help each other plan and support each other – you’re not alone!
• “I can only do my best” – should be your mantra in any difficult situation.??Do your best, (work really hard and take total ownership of customers needs and quality) and then if that’s not enough you can be satisfied that you could do no more.
• Take your time – don’t let other people make you panic.??If something is new and complicated you might want to do it in several parts, or plan before starting, and you have a right to do that.?
• Tackle one part to start with, and then, once you have nailed that, move on to the next part.??Everything new can be broken down into steps to learn.

3 – Stressed because too many things are calling for your attention at once and you don’t know where to start, and you feel (probably rightly) that you can’t do it all.

This is time management rather than project management – lots of small things that aren’t connected, so you have too much choice as to what you do when.

There are your options when you are too busy, when you have too much to do:

• Say no to some of it
• Delegate some of it
• Find more efficient ways to do some of it
• Consider being less fussy about how you do the less important stuff – perfectionists are easily overwhelmed
• Make a list of everything so at least you know the size of the problem (and if it’s too big then it’s back to saying no and delegating) - and then you can…
• Prioritise – depending on what’s most urgent, and also what’s most important, you can do a mixture of these two in order to keep everyone else happy (the urgent stuff) and make yourself happy (progress on things that are important).??
• Agree the order with your boss – if you can’t do everything right now (who can??) you can make this point to your boss in a constructive, non-wingey way, by saying “This is my plan, this is the order I’ll get these things done, and approximately when I think they’ll be done, are you OK with this?”.

So there we are, no more "overwhelm" except for the awe of the natural world!

Onwards and upwards

CC

PS for time management help:

This is free if you have access to linkedin learning, linkedin premium, or if you want to do the 28 day free trial:

If you want to buy courses on Udemy (they are quite cheap, and much better than going through life overwhelmed!)

For project management planning help:

or from udemy: