Dealing with the Overwhelm of Everyday Tasks
This is advice on tangible steps and resources for how to start taking action on the huge to-do list that’s weighing you down so you can stop procrastinating, feel relief from overwhelm, and even start enjoying everyday tasks.
Just yesterday, a client and I spent our hour in session tackling her overwhelm. Sometimes, I get clients who come in and they are emotionally overwhelmed with the reality of what’s happened to them. And sometimes, I get clients who are so burnt out and exhausted that just doing everyday tasks feels overwhelming. The to-do list starts to pile up but the only things that seem to get done are sleeping (somewhat restlessly) and going to work.
So, this article is all about that last kind of overwhelm — when the mountain of things to do is looming over you like a monster, paralyzing you from doing anything at all, so you’re operating in a constant state of procrastination and getting by with the bare minimum.
We’ll talk about what you can tangibly do to start breaking down what seem like huge elephants into small bite-sized pieces that you can eat one bite at a time.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
A lot of my clients blame themselves for their circumstances and suffering. They’re really hard on themselves. Do you feel this?
I’m all about taking responsibility for your actions and your healing. If you are self sabotaging, that’s one thing we can work on. But, taking responsibility and making changes to make right any harm you caused is different than blaming yourself and beating yourself up for something that’s waaaay bigger than you. That can be really defeating and insidious, whereas taking responsibility and action can be healing for all involved. With that said…
We live in a society that perpetuates burnout and overwhelm. We’re set up to live in a way that separates us from those who are most important and actually hinders connection. Society, and mainly capitalism, says our focus should be hustling, working harder, getting more, doing more, and that’s the most important thing at the expense of all else.
However, community and social connection is one of the key ways we survive as humans. We may have community at work, but if all we’re doing is working to pay for the things we never or barely have time to enjoy, then, what’s the real point here?
We’re not set up to be able to be balanced and well-rounded either. So that’s three things we need to help reduce overwhelm so far, that society is set up to keep us separate from: community, balance, and well-roundedness. We’re supposed to be independent or we’re weak. Work hard and always be productive or we’re useless. Specialize so we can be more efficient and in-demand or otherwise we’re just floundering.
I call B.S.
The system is broken.
So, if you’re telling yourself that you’re weak for asking for help, question why you think that and remember that asking for help is strong.
If you’re telling yourself you’re lazy if you rest, question why you think that and remember that resting as hard as you work is necessary to stay healthy and able to work and play in the first place.
If you’re telling yourself you’re too slow and have too many interests because you’re not specialized, ask yourself why you think that and remember that being well-rounded helps you address yourself and your needs as a whole human, not just one piece or part. And when you take care of yourself holistically through work, play, or however else, you feel seen, heard, and build more trust in yourself.
Knowing that we’re set up in society in a way that prioritizes what might not be your personal priorities, you can start to change things in your own life. You can start to reject what’s not working for you and stand firm in your truth around what works for you and what doesn’t. And it might be difficult, as capitalism and the old paradigm of productivity is ingrained and conditioned in us from birth.
You might need to set boundaries at work or with certain friends, for example, and go from there to start rejecting the broken systems.
Ultimately though, know you’re not alone in your overwhelm. And, it can be reduced with time, patience, and action.
Knowing your priorities can help you decide where to start when tackling a giant to-do list.
Here are several methods you can use to help set your priorities:
Run your options through your core values to see what is most important to you.
Look at timelines and deadlines to decide.
What is overwhelming you the most? Can you knock it out first?
What are the external blocks to each task and how can you remove them?
You can use one at a time or a combination of methods when prioritizing your tasks. I’ll give you examples of how to use each method, so let’s identify some things on our example to-do list real quick so the examples make sense.
Let’s say you’re overwhelmed because your house has fallen into disrepair and there are so many things that need maintenance you don’t know where to start. But, at the same time, your car needs maintenance, you need to prepare for traveling for a work conference, you’re also feeling lonely and want to make some friends, and your doctor is saying you need to change your diet because you have high cholesterol.
Yes, you could subscribe to the old saying that when it rains, it often pours. Or, you could choose to focus on the fact that we have umbrellas, rain coats, and good tires on our car that help us navigate the rain AND the rain is necessary for our beautiful flowers in the soon-to-be maintained yard to bloom. Be sure to feel and acknowledge all of your emotions either way as you start the prioritization process.
Now, let’s briefly dive into each method.
Use Your Core Values to Decide
If you know what your core values are AND you know which ones are your top 5 or so you can compare your big tasks (for this example, the ones we identified above) to your values and see how you can apply your values to each task. Then, also think about which tasks allow you to live your values more authentically the quickest or most fully. Here’s what I mean:
My top 5 values are:
Respect
Love
Making a positive impact
Fun
Health
Looking at these, I could see that if I want to feel respect for myself, I definitely need to start repairing the house. When my home base is inviting and a nice place that calms me and inspires me, I’m better able to love my family and friends, make a positive impact in the world, and even take care of my health. If my house were great and organized, I could more easily prepare for my work trip too, because my clothes would be easier to find. I can even find ways to make repairing my house fun. Even though my car needs maintenance, it can make it a little longer, so I can wait on that a bit.
In this example of using my values to prioritize what must be done, I was able to identify the most important project based on what’s most important to me and that would also help all the other projects fall into place.
If there aren’t other external factors to think about, then you can do this and get started. If you have some time constraints though, you’ll want to take that into consideration too.
Decide Based on Any External Timelines and Deadlines
Building on the same example we started above, I need to consider any external timelines or deadlines being imposed on me.
I know that if I don’t mow my yard soon, the city is going to be breathing down my back. I also can't afford for my car to break down, but it’s still not as urgent as the grass situation. And, I’d eventually like to move, but I can’t even start to think about that if my house is completely broken. So, the most urgent task is the grass.
I also know that my work conference is next week, so I don’t have to start packing for at least 5 days.
Knock Out What’s Overwhelming You the Most First
Continuing to build on the same example still, I can go within and explore to determine what’s overwhelming me the most and why.
For me, I’d say that my house is overwhelming me most because if it’s chaotic, my mind is also chaotic. I want more calm in my life in general, so tackling the house would help alleviate the most chaos and therefore provide the most calm.
However, it’s a bigger project and having one small win might help me get moving, which would also help alleviate the overwhelm. Because if I’m not making any movement to alleviate it, it’s still there, of course. So, even though I want to work on my house first, it makes sense that taking my car in for an oil change could be a great small win to help start the ball rolling.
Remove Obstacles
And, to finish off this example, I know that there are parts of my house repair project that I can’t make movement on, such as, I need a contractor to help me fix the floor in the bathroom. And I work a lot so it would be easy to pay someone to mow the grass, I just don’t know who and it’s been difficult finding someone. So, to remove the obstacles of not having people to do these jobs, I’d need to find the right people. That would require research. Research will take a little bit of time, so even though mowing grass is the most urgent, I won’t be able to do it immediately. Maybe I can take my car in for an oil change tomorrow and while I’m waiting, I’ll Google contractors and landscaping companies on my phone.
So, based on all the analysis I did above, here are what I think my priorities are:
Car maintenance
House repair
Prepare for traveling to work conference
Diet
Make new friends
This can be tricky. When you’re a trauma survivor, you may feel disconnected from what would traditionally be known as your support system. Also, you may feel like you need your independence and don’t like asking for help.
Most of my clients show up knowing they have a hard time trusting and therefore delegating, which are two areas you’re required to lean on when you tap into your support system.
There can be a lot to unpack there before you feel comfortable asking others for help. We’ll skim the surface of it here, but you’ll want to find ways to rely on your support system sooner rather than later, maybe even before you’ve unpacked and processed everything, in order to address your overwhelm, which is keeping you paralyzed.
Who Can You Team Up with to Make the Tasks More Enjoyable?
If you’re single, maybe you’d get more done if someone you had fun with was doing the work alongside you? Think about who in your support system might mutually benefit from this activity and reach out. Y’all can organize your garage or one can mow while the other weed eats, for example, at your house. And next week, you can go do the same at his, hers, or their house. It’s a win-win and can take some of the dread out of the work.
If you’re married or in relationship, you can still do this type of activity with a friend, but you can also communicate to your partner and/or kids, set expectations, and plan to do work together to make it more enjoyable.
What Can You Delegate to Whom?
Delegating is simply handing over a task to someone else to complete.
You can delegate to paid professionals or to people you personally know. Paid and personal connections can be part of your support system.
Delegating requires you to be able to trust that the person you delegate to will do what they say. In other words, they must be dependable. Secondly, delegating requires you to be able to ask for help. It also requires you to be able to handle a “no” as an answer, adapt, and move on to another option or to be able to receive a “yes” as an answer and actually accept the help after you’ve asked for it. Or, if help was offered, you must be able to accept and receive it for delegating to work.
After you hand over the task and clearly communicate what you need to be done, try to release micromanaging it, as this will only add to your overwhelm. Even if the person does the job differently than you would do it, that’s okay. You must be able to accept that, as long as the job meets good quality.
Does the job have to be perfect and exactly like you’d do it to be done and done well?
No. Accepting this is a huge step in managing expectations and being able to decrease your overwhelm. Because if you micromanage the person you delegate to, your overwhelm will remain.
However, not micromanaging doesn’t mean lack of communication. Open lines of communication are important and key to building connection and relationship and ensuring realistic expectations are met.
Remember to Rely on Your Higher Power
No matter what you believe and who or what your higher power is, remember that you can talk to it. You can ask for help, support, and guidance at any time. This also requires you to being open to receive the help, support, and guidance in whatever form it arrives. Prayer and meditation are helpful tools in asking for and receiving support from your higher power. If this isn’t a normal practice for you, perhaps schedule in time to start adding these practices to your days or weeks.
Breaking down a large task into smaller ones requires you to be really realistic about what’s doable for you in the amount of time you have and if you get it wrong, the ability to adapt and keep iterating on breaking the task down into even more granularity. You also need to take into account if one task needs to happen before another one can be completed.
The best way to describe how to do this is show you. Let’s use the example from earlier. We named car maintenance as the top priority, but that was a pretty small project that was easy to do. So, we’ll move on to the next priority and start breaking down the huge project of maintaining a house that’s fallen into disrepair.
You don’t have to create a diagram like this if you don’t want to. You can scribble your categories and smaller tasks on paper. However you do it, be sure to group your categories and tasks logically together based on how your brain would divide up and batch or economize the work. For example, I essentially broke the lawn down to grass and flower beds and then batched all flower bed tasks together. But, you might only want to weed, mulch, and deadhead one bed at a time.
Once you’ve broken everything down into the granularity that’s manageable for you, then it’s time to use accountability tools that work for you to help you take action on the tasks in whatever order works for you.
Being accountable means managing the tasks that are part of achieving your goals and obligations responsibly, fulfilling what you committed to, and consistently reflecting on how it went and what you need as you evolve and grow.
Accountability tools are how you ensure and remind yourself of your obligations and are one way to stay motivated to do them.
In other words, they’re tools that help you build self discipline. Over time, once you build habits, routines, and even a different lifestyle, you may be able to rely less and less on accountability tools or know which ones work best for you.
Let’s go over several real resources that you can rely on. These are mostly free and readily available that my clients and I love.
Check Lists
Isn’t it satisfying to check an item off a list?
You can create check lists in the Notes app on your phone or use real pen and paper. You can create as many different categories of check lists as you’d like.
When trying to reduce your overwhelm while gaining more productivity, you should focus on short, achievable lists.
It can be tempting to add everything to one list to help you remember it. I think it’s fine to do this as long as the long list isn’t the list you complete actions from. You need to categorize it and break it down into smaller lists.
For example, looking back at the small tasks on the House Repair/Maintenance project diagram, I might choose hiring someone to mow and catching up on dishes for my Friday check list. Then on Saturday, if I’m off work, I could create a check list with 3-6 other items, depending on what’s doable, and so forth. My Saturday list might include mop, wash curtains, and pick out and buy tile.
Calendar Blocking
As with all of these accountability tools so far, you can use a digital calendar or a physical one.
If I need to make sure something gets done, I put it in the calendar.
If you’re used to only scheduling big events and appointments into your calendar, this could make your calendar feel really full or cluttered at first, but it’s so helpful and worth a try.
It helps you visually see the realistic amount of time you have in a day, which makes your limited resource of time more tangible. This sets you up for success because if you’re realistic about what you have time to do, you won’t be disappointed when you didn’t become a super human to complete a million things in one day.
If you schedule in time for a task to get done, that makes it harder to spend that time doing something else. It helps you prioritize your time and reminders pop up in your email and on your phone if you want them to.
When you’re using calendar blocking, you can also schedule in time for breaks, rest, sleep, fun, recreation, or a time where you can choose whatever the mood strikes if you’d like.
At first, I recommend scheduling everything in. Eventually you can take out what you don’t need on the calendar. That way your life doesn’t have to feel scheduled to the hilt, but you’ve spent time learning what works for you on the calendar and what doesn’t.
Setting Your Own Deadlines
If you give yourself a deadline, you’re more likely to get your task done sooner, according to Parkinson’s Law. It’s the phenomenon that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. So if no time is allotted, all your work just keeps expanding into all the time!
Also, when you limit the amount of time you have to do something, while giving yourself enough time to not be stressed, you’re prioritizing getting the task done over perfectionism. And getting the task done is what will decrease your overwhelm.
As an added project management bonus, when you set a deadline, you can work backwards from it to see when you need to do what in a larger project.
If you don’t meet the deadline, you don’t have to beat yourself up, but I guarantee you’ll get more done than if you didn’t have one. And if you do meet the deadline, you can celebrate! And who doesn’t love a reason to celebrate? This brings us to our next tool…
Gamify or Make Your Tasks Fun
Tons of research suggests that play is essential to adults just as much as children for reasons such as boosting wellbeing, helping you cope with stress, and boosting physical health. Oftentimes, the tasks looming over you create stress. So, by turning a task into a game, you’re not only going to get the task done, but you’re managing the stress of not wanting to do it in the first place in addition to incentivizing yourself.
Here’s an example of how to gamify a looming task:
If you’re organizing your closet, set out three boxes: One for things you’ll keep, one for donate items, and a third for things you’ll sell, and then set up a trash can for things you’ll throw away. If items aren’t breakable, toss them from a distance into the boxes and see if you can make it. You could even set up a point system for different distances and see how many points you can earn for each successful toss. Set rewards for certain amounts of points. Like, if you score 20 points, go for ice cream. If you score 50 points, take a break. If you score 100 points, maybe do something bigger.
Get creative with it! There ain’t no shame in having fun!
Project Management Apps
You might think project management apps are only for your job or career related projects, but they can totally work for personal projects too.
It’s just a way to organize a large project into small, achievable steps and visualize where they’re all at in the grand scheme of things.
Here’s an example of one of my project management boards in Trello, a free tool you can start using today! (I’m not affiliated with them, btw.)
Seeing the big picture and taking stock of your progress in this way helps reduce the anxiety of not knowing what’s going on, feeling like you have more to do than you really do, or thinking you haven’t made any progress. Less anxiety can translate into less overwhelm. And being organized around what needs to be done also can translate into less overwhelm.
Plus, it’s so satisfying to move your task across the board.
Setting Reminders
Setting reminders helps jog your memory so you don’t forget what needs to be done. Forgetting is normal, because we can’t possibly hold everything in our heads at all times. The mental load we carry with us these days is huge. So, reminders help reduce the mental load.
You can set reminders on apps on your phone or computer like the Reminders app or digital sticky notes.
Or, of course, you can actually write on physical sticky notes and post them around where you’ll see them. You could even put them in places that will annoy you to incentivize doing the task so you can remove the sticky note so it’s no longer an eye sore.
In fact, thinking back to Trello, mentioned above, the tasks in the project board mimic sticky notes. If you wanted to organize your sticky note reminders into a real Trello board, you could hang a bulletin board on your wall, divide it with washi tape, label each vertical lane, and put your sticky notes in the categories you created to visually see the progress you've made on those. What fun! I love getting crafty.
ADHD or Other Medication (If Applicable)
I don’t treat or prescribe. But, I do have clients that are in therapy, have been diagnosed, and are prescribed medication for mental health. I’m a firm believer that medicine doesn’t solve everything and that if you can get off it safely, that’s great. You have to use discernment at this time in our society where medications are overprescribed, used for profit and greed over human wellness, and used as bandaid or crutch rather than getting to the root of the issue.
Now that that’s said, medication can also be very helpful when it’s prescribed correctly and used correctly. It can also be a wonderful stop gap in getting you over certain humps until the root of the issue can be addressed effectively over time.
So, if you’ve been prescribed medication correctly by a trustworthy clinician, go ahead and take it. It’ll help you function and manage your life. And when it doesn’t help anymore, make sure you find another option.
What other resources could support you in finding the accountability you need?
Getting started can be a stumbling block for many of us. Why?
Procrastination.
Procrastination is delaying or postponing something until later. There are many opinions about why we procrastinate. Two opinions that I agree with are that it’s a form of perfectionism and it’s also a form of self harm relating to emotional dysregulation. It’s not about time management or laziness at all. (Although your ability to focus and complete a project is related to time management, more on that in the next section).
If those opinions are true, which I believe they are, then the answers to ending procrastination are:
Let go of perfectionism. It’s okay for something to be done good and not great.
At the heart of perfectionism is a deep desire to be accepted. But striving for external acceptance at all costs can make you miserable, even if it’s what you had to do to get acceptance and affection as a child. To support you in letting go of perfectionism, remember that you are safe to be less than perfect. It's better that others judge and abandon than for you to self abandon out of fear of judgment or failure. The people who are aligned with you are likely not to abandon anyways. The ones who do judge or abandon are a blessing because that opens doors for more alignment to enter your life.
Related: Ways to Stop Fearing Rejection
Have self compassion. The ingredients of self compassion are a foundation of self love, a practice of kindness to yourself, and taking action to alleviate your own suffering.
Embrace and let yourself feel the emotions that come up around the tasks you need to do so you can release them and get moving.
There could be a lot to unpack and process there. But, if you can just start letting go and loving yourself a little bit, that may be enough to change your mood just enough to get started.
After you get started, you can use the momentum you’ve built to keep on rolling. While you’re rolling, you can continue practicing letting go of perfectionism, growing your self compassion, and emotional regulation.
Work on one, two, or maybe three tasks at a time only. Here’s why:
Context switching a lot creates too much drag, which hinders your productivity. It definitely contributes to feeling stuck. Context switching can occur by your own choice as needed by your creativity or it can be foisted upon you by external distractions.
Multitasking, which is different than context switching, can be helpful in many ways and harmful in other ways. It’s important to know when and when not to multitask depending on your goals.
Accounting for all the beautiful neurodiversity that comes with our human brains, it’s also important that you know what each of these things are, how they impact your own ability to focus, and how they help your ability to make progress. There’s definitely wiggle room in how you choose to stay focused based on what works best for you.
Let’s dive a little deeper into each one.
Context Switching and Drag
Context switching is when you switch from one task to another, so your brain has to shift gears. Drag is what happens when your brain naturally needs time to catch up to the switch you made. It’s the time it takes for your brain to fully switch gears and start to focus again on the new task at hand.
According to research, shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40% of your productive time. Let’s do the math.
Let’s say you’re context switching every 10 minutes — whether that’s by an external interruption or distraction or by your own choosing. Forty percent of 10 minutes is 4 minutes.
In this scenario, it’s taking about 4 minutes for your brain to re-focus and get into the new task. That might not seem so bad because 4 minutes seems small. But let’s look at the exponential impact.
If you’re trying to focus on a task for an hour and you get interrupted, 40% of that time is 24 minutes. So, if you get interrupted 5 times in an hour (by say scrolling or texting, for example), it ends up creating two hours of drag (5 x 24). So that’s a total of 3 full hours to do a task that would have originally taken 1 hour.
In this example, you’re creating more drag than productivity.
See how that can contribute to feeling stuck?
If you’re context switching because you like having a variety of tasks to ward off boredom and keep your creativity flowing, that’s one thing. I’d encourage you to figure out the minimum number of tasks you can switch between where your productive time is greater than your drag time.
But if you’re picking up your phone and scrolling out of habit or answering a text message that interrupts your focus, it’s time to set some boundaries around your time so you can avoid those distractions.
Multitasking
Multitasking is when you do more than one thing simultaneously.
Multitasking has gotten a bad rap. As a busy mom and entrepreneur, and as many of my clients are go-getters and leaders, it comes up though as something that’s perceived as needed. However, it’s good to know when multitasking can be helpful and when it can be harmful. Because multitasking is also highly valued by the broken system that keeps us burnt out and overwhelmed in the first place, it needs to be unpacked, understood, and used with discernment.
Here’s a great article explaining the pros and cons of multitasking, it’s effects on learning, and great tips for how to multitask properly and effectively. It also addresses how to improve your focus. Pure gold.
Everything we’ve covered above is all about adjusting your mind for action and creating a realistic plan that works for you and executing it.
Many times, having a plan can help you start taking steps in the direction you want to go, even if the plan must change after you get started. Then, you just readjust it and keep going with the new plan. But taking the time to plan is not a waste of time. It’s a valuable strategy to help manage overwhelm.
And once you get going, you may find that making progress on what’s weighing on you will clear up some of your energy so that you actually have more energy to keep going.
Once you’ve conquered the mountain of tasks looming over you, the next step is to make sure that any bumps or hills that pop up along the way don’t become mountains again.
More order in your life, whatever that means for you, allows you to move through your environment and activities with more ease and flow.
If you need support with any of these things, I’m here.
Questions or Comments?
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions in the comments, or you can schedule a free consultation.
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Hey there!
I’m Brandi Fleck, TICC. I’m a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and trauma recovery coach. All genders, sexualities, and races are welcome here. I primarily serve clients via one-on-one coaching and self-paced trauma education.
I respect your privacy.
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