Yeah, yeah. I can hear the disbelief now. You have children and responsibilities and a job and laundry and meals and bills to pay and homework and a paper to write and a thousand and one other things that need to get done. You are overwhelmed by all that you think you need to do. How do you stop feeling overwhelmed when you have so much to do? You can change your mindset. You do not need to feel so overwhelmed. It is possible to change. You can stop feeling overwhelmed.
Is this what your normal day looks like?
How do you stop feeling overwhelmed when you have so much to do?
Let’s think about this. Are you like the little cartoon with the stack of items that need to be done?
Pause, take a deep breath, and think about all those tasks. Can you do all of them at once? Oh, you can have a load of wash in the machine while you are doing dishes. That is one thing. You cannot, however, load the washing machine at the same time as you are washing dishes. You cannot be working on homework at the same time as you are making a bed or cooking dinner.
Somewhere, I do not remember where, I read that “Being overwhelmed simply means you do not know where to start”. I think there is a lot of truth to that. When you have a long list of things that need to be done, don’t you try to figure out what to do first? “How to stop feeling overwhelmed”might just mean taking one task and getting started. If you do not know where to start, just pick something.
If there was an obvious starting point, that would be clear, right? If you are afraid you will make the wrong choice, stop that thinking. You are not getting anywhere if you do not make a choice, so making a choice is progress. Does that make sense?
Have you ever lost points on an assignment because you forgot to do something? My assignment checklist can help you remember the details. Check it out! It is FREE!!!!
This may be a radical thought for some of you, but, in reality, all you can do is ONE THING AT A TIME. You do not get overwhelmed by one task.
That’s it. Some are laughing and thinking, “I can walk and talk and chew gum at the same time.” OK. I grant that, so maybe I should write you can only do one thing meaningfully at a time. If you can cook dinner at the same time you do some math homework, you should find an agent and make money telling people how you do it.
How do you stop feeling overwhelmed when you have so much to do? What gets overwhelming is when we think of ALL the tasks we need to do. Plan the tasks you need to do and focus on the task you are doing.
Our brains are not created to think of multiple topics simultaneously. In this regard, our brains are like a computer. A computer does not do multiple things at one time. Seriously. A computer does one task at a time and then does another task. The difference is that the computer does those tasks really, really, really, really quickly.
Our brains do not do shift from one task to another well.
Well, our brains can shift gears easily, but only when the topics are not complicated. You can shift from one television channel to another, or one movie to another, but what happens if you try shifting from one bill to thinking about the next mortgage payment?
If we do one thing, then shift gears, do something else, and then shift gears again, our brain loses a split second of awareness and connectivity. Depending on the task, we can actually spend more time trying to figure out what we were doing than we spent in shifting gears. Trying to do too many different tasks at one time is one reason you feel overwhelmed with having so many things to do. When you focus on one thing at a time, you can stop feeling so overwhelmed.
Who is reading this who has not shifted mental gears, only to shift back, then have to figure out what was happening before the gears shifted? Maybe you were cooking, shifted gears, then resumed cooking, only to discover later you added sugar to the recipe, not salt. You added “White granular stuff”, but it was the wrong white granular stuff. Individual readers may not have done this specifically, but do I have any readers who cannot identify with the concept?
Our human brains can meaningfully manage one thing at a time.
One thing at a time.
Let’s return to being overwhelmed and that little cartoon. You are not a witch or a wizard who can twitch a nose or wave a wand and have all that activity suddenly completed. All you can do is one thing at a time.
Repeat after me:
One thing at a time.
Feeling overwhelmed is a feeling, not a fact.
The next time (Now??) you feel overwhelmed, remember that you are experiencing a feeling. It is a thought. That idea is in your head and nowhere else. You are looking at a very long To-Do list, but all the items are more than likely do-able. You “simply” need to look at the list and figure out which items are priorities and which items can be done later.
Do you have a long list of priorities?? Prioritize the priorities. I suspect that some of your priorities are more important than others. It is quite possible that some of those “priorities” are the priorities of other people, not you. Why should you attend to someone else’s priority before you attend to yours?
Well, this is for my child/spouse/significant other/boss/whomever.
OK. So?
If you are at work and you are working on a priority for your boss, OK, I will grant you that. If, however, you are confronted with baking cookies when you were not told you had to, then this might be time for a learning moment, in which someone learns that he or she needs to share information with you.
But, but, but…
Maybe you do totally mess up your schedule to make the cookies. What are you teaching your child? For one thing, you are not teaching consequences. For another, you are teaching your child that you are a push-over and can be contorted to do anything the child wants at any time. Is that what you want?
You are modeling your behavior for your children.
You might teach them to feel overwhelmed.
Let’s take this one step further. You are teaching your child that the way a “good parent” behaves is to drop everything and attend to your child’s needs. Could you be teaching your child a practice that really is not beneficial to either you or your child? Children do what we do, not what we say. Do you want your child to be a push-over as an adult?
Do ONE thing. Tackle one task. Work your way through that list of things to be done with the knowledge that you are doing the best you can. You do not have to be overwhelmed if you are in control of what you have to do. Being overwhelmed simply means your To-Do list is longer than usual; you still need to address the tasks in the same way: One at a time.
Does this make sense?
Does anyone wish to debate the issue with me? If so, feel free to make a comment, either for or against.
Have a good week of feeling more in control of what YOU decide to do with your time. Believing you are overwhelmed by all that you need to do can be something that is in your past, not your future.
Have you ever lost points on an assignment because you forgot to do something? My assignment checklist can help you remember the details. Check it out! It is FREE!!!!
Check out some of my other posts and let me know what was most helpful to you.
You can read my blog about organizing your day so that it seems as if you have added an hour or two to your day.
Learning to limit your negative self-talk also helps.
Are you worried sick about something or facing a crisis of some sort?
Are you afraid to be you when you are around other people?
Do you love or hate To Do Lists?
Do you need some tips on how to study at home when you have children?
Valerie
updated 24 July 2022
Thank you for the tips. I often find myself doing too many things at the same time and not doing them well. Loading the washer only to realize that I never put in the clothes or starting something and not following through. I will start doing one thing meaningfully at a time.
Oh, do I understand. I have “washed the washer” more times than I care to count.
This last week, however, was different as my water heater decided to die on Thanksgiving and started leaking all over my washing machine. The water heater is on a raised wooden shelf which got soaked and started to grow mold.
I was a bit preoccupied last week, to say the least.
I am starting to see a few things that indicate that our brains may literally get tired when we try to do too much at one time. That makes sense to me because it explains why we start things and then forget them. I know, beyond doubt, that you have walked into a room, stopped, and asked yourself why you walked into the room.
I know that because it happens to all of us.
I am pleased the post helped. Was there a particular point, other than being meaningful and intentional, that seemed to resonate with you?
Valerie
Providing information and tools to help harried adult college students earn their degrees without losing their sanity.