Do you ever feel like you have so much to do that you just don’t know where to start? Have you ever felt completely submerged by your thoughts and emotions that you aren’t productive, or maybe you just feel frozen and unable to act?
That’s overwhelm.
Most people feel stress from time to time, but when a person believes that the stressors are too great to manage, they may be unable to think, act or function rationally. Emotional overwhelm can have an impact on your professional life and on your relationships.
Although the causes can vary, I often witness overwhelm among business owners and leaders when they’ve lost sight of their sense of purpose and priority. They start to become more reactive and less proactive and they become increasingly consumed by firefighting. Consequently, their productivity drops and they end up having a build-up of tasks which leads to stress, overwhelm and inactivity.
So what can you do to avoid overwhelm in the first place? Here are 3 of the strategies I use with my clients.
Planning
Having a plan is like having a compass. When you are blown off course, which will inevitably happen from time to time, or when you might feel lost, your plan will help you find your way again. But don’t be tempted to look too far ahead in your plan. Just focus on taking the next steps.
The problem with most plans is that they comprise of goals but very little detail on the plans and actions required to achieve the goals. A set of goals without a plan is no more than a wish-list.
I encourage my clients to think about what they want to achieve in the medium and long term, but the most important plan is the 90-day plan. It’s almost impossible to create a plan that you will stick to in the next 5 or 3 years or even over 1 year. However, a 90-day timeframe is much more realistic. When you set goals it’s important to understand what achieving them will mean for you. The more committed you are to those goals, the more likely you will meet them. The plan itself needs to be granular: detail the actions, who will complete them and by when.
For example, if you are trying to increase new sales you might need to speak to 5 new prospects per month in order to win two new clients. Your plan should detail how many emails you will have to send each week and how many follow up calls you’ll have to make to generate 5 new prospects each month.
Such a detailed plan, with meaningful goals, will always provide you with a sense of direction, it will help you get back on track if you get blown off course and it will help you avoid that onset of panic and overwhelm.
Make the best use of your time
Time can be your best friend, or it can be your worst enemy. That’s because It’s a finite resource – once it’s gone it’s gone – so use it wisely.
The number of hours you work is not necessarily a sign of your productivity. I’ve met business owners who work 50 to 60 hours per week and still never feel like they are on top of things. We all know the expression ‘being a busy fool’ – occupying yourself with trivial urgent things that don’t actually move your business forward. Your day or week can fly past but in the end you have that sense of disappointment that you didn’t achieve much.
I also meet business owners who feel guilty if they’re not sitting at their desks for several hours a day, ‘putting in a shift’. We’re conditioned to think this way from a young age. We’ve been led to believe that if we’re not ‘doing something’ all the time, we’re not being productive. And to compound matters, we’re surrounded by tales of successful people who appear to work all hours, 7 days a week and take no holidays – as if it’s a badge of honour to be proud of. It’s no wonder that the pressure we put ourselves under to work harder and longer can lead to feelings of overwhelm.
It shouldn’t be this way, though. I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t work hard, but I am recommending that you should work smarter. Here are some ideas.
Most people have a list of ‘things to do’ in some shape or form. If you keep yours in your head, write it down. It will seem less overwhelming if you commit it to paper and it will save you from forgetting important things. The mistake that most people make is that their daily list is 20+ items and they just start to plough through them. That’s a recipe for disaster because you’ll never get through them all, you’ll have to push many items to the next day and, to top it all, you’ll feel like you’re failing! Instead, look at your list of to dos and highlight the 5 most important items from the list; then schedule them in your calendar, as if they were appointments. Ideally do this the day before to plan your next working day, which will save time on the day. Then just do them.
Yes, it requires some discipline and yes you must be single-minded. But if you complete 5 important actions that will move your business forward, every day, imagine what that will mean for your business and how you will feel.
So, the key is to get everything you need to do out of your head, prioritise the most important tasks, schedule them and finally focus on doing the activities. The results will look after themselves. And if you finish these tasks before your ‘normal’ finish time, don’t be afraid to treat yourself to an early finish from time to time. You deserve it.
Make time for yourself
As a business owner or leader, your work is never complete. There are always plans to make, customers to speak to, meetings to attend, employees to support, reports to produce and (dare I say it) fires to put out. It’s never-ending, but that’s the nature of owning or running a business.
Even if you do work smarter, you can easily become consumed by all your work priorities and without even realising it, you can find yourself working longer hours. That will almost certainly have an impact on how much time you can give to your partner, family and friends. Before you know it you’ll be cancelling that gym class you wanted to get to or postponing that family dinner you had planned. And that will impact your mental and physical wellbeing.
These days, work-life and personal life, particularly for business owners, is a blend rather than two opposing priorities. But it’s still important to get the blend right. The problem is that if you don’t give this the attention it deserves, inevitably the ‘important’ and ‘urgent’ work-related demands on your time will eventually outweigh the ‘nice to have’ personal time you’d like.
To create that balance, start by spending some time identifying what things are most important to you, the things that you value most. What do you enjoy doing? What do you find fulfilling? It might be spending time with your family, or it may be spending a little time on your own; perhaps it’s exercise, travel, walking, reading or playing sport.
Whatever those things are for you, make time for them. But start with small steps. For example, if you’d really like to get to the gym regularly but haven’t found the time to visit the gym at all in the last few weeks, don’t make a commitment to do 4 one-hour workouts every week. You’ll most likely set yourself up to fail and that will dishearten you from trying again. Instead, set a goal of going to the gym twice in the week and only for 30 minutes each time. Then book those times in your calendar, right now. If you want to spend more time reading, block out 20 minutes in your calendar 3 times a week. One hour of exercise and one hour of reading each week is manageable. Once you start to form those habits increase your commitment step by step.
The important thing is to create balance in your life by making time to do the things you enjoy and value. They won’t find time by themselves, you must make the time.
In business there will be unexpected setbacks, there will be challenges and disappointments; things that will increase your workload, cause you stress and potentially overwhelm you. Unfortunately, business won’t get easier but you can get better at business. There are techniques that will help you navigate the potential challenges and setbacks, stay in control and lead a more balanced and fulfilling life.
If you’d like to discuss how you can implement any of these ideas and learn about more techniques to avoid overwhelm then feel free to get in contact by emailing me on info@iniceos.com and we can set up a call.
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