How to Deal With Overwhelm When You Have Too Much Work
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As freelancers and small business owners, there are so many things we could be doing with our time. Besides paid client work, we have to manage our finances and admin, keep on top of our professional development, and stay up to date with the industry we work in as well as our areas of specialisation. And that’s not to mention consistently marketing our services so we have a good flow of new prospects coming through the door at all times.
That’s a lot even on a good day when we aren’t too busy and can fit most things in. But when our client workload is heavy, we can very quickly become overwhelmed by everything we have on our plate. Feelings of overwhelm can easily lead to panic and paralysis, resulting in a lack of action and things getting progressively worse.
That’s why, when you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the things you have to do, it’s important to know how to prioritise your workload.
If you’re able to break your workload down based on what needs doing in which order, you’ll be able to take concrete action so you can gradually get back on top of things rather than watching the situation deteriorate.
In this blog post, I’m sharing 3 tips (plus a bonus tip!) to help you deal with overwhelm the next time you find yourself faced with too much work.
How to deal with overwhelm from too much work
1) Get everything out of your head
The first thing that can provide some immediate relief is getting everything out of your head and onto paper (or the digital system of your choice).
You might prefer to create lists using brightly coloured pens in nice notebooks, or you might want to record everything in a work management platform like Asana or monday.com. I personally love using ClickUp. The free version gives me everything I need to manage my workload all in one place.
It doesn’t matter which method you prefer; seeing everything laid out in front of you can help you start to feel more capable of dealing with it.
Getting all your tasks written down (or typed up) will also free up the valuable headspace you’ll need to actually start tackling your workload and completing some of the things you have to get done.
This is probably one of the quickest and easiest ways to start feeling less overwhelmed. However, it’s also a step people often skip because they think they don’t have time to do it with everything else they have on. In my experience, it’s well worth taking 10 minutes to get everything out of your head and into a physical form. You’ll feel more in control afterwards and much more able to take action!
2) Break tasks down into smaller chunks
Once you’ve got everything down onto paper or into your digital system of choice, the next step is to break every task down into the smallest possible chunks. This is because it’s far easier to get started when the tasks aren’t big ones.
Smaller tasks feel much more manageable, and the more manageable something feels, the less overwhelm you’ll experience.
So, to give you an example from my own work, rather than just having ‘copy edit paper for client X’, I’ll break that down into all the steps that go into editing that paper. I’ll also list out each section of the paper so I can tackle them one by one. I find this far less overwhelming than looking at the paper as a whole.
This technique can be applied to any task for any type of service provision. What’s more, once you start working through your smaller tasks, you’ll begin to feel a sense of achievement as you tick them off one after another and see yourself making progress.
3) Prioritise your list of broken-down tasks
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s important to accept that you might not be able to get everything done that you originally wanted to. Instead of getting upset about this, recognise that some things can wait. Not everything has to be done right now.
Prioritise your list of broken-down tasks according to whether or not they’ll generate income for your business and whether they have to be done today or could wait for a later date. If you have any upcoming deadlines for client work, these will obviously take priority. But don’t forget that if you have nice customers who aren’t in a particular rush, they might be willing and able to give you an extension too.
In this blog post on task prioritisation, I share the system I use to manage my workload. Being able to divide my tasks into different categories based on whether or not they generate income for my business and how urgent they are helps me understand what needs to be done today and what can wait until tomorrow.
4) BONUS: Block out your calendar with your most important tasks
If it helps you understand what’s realistic for you in terms of what you can physically do and what might need to be pushed to a later date, try blocking out your calendar with your most important tasks.
Estimate how long each broken-down task is going to take you and get it in your diary. This way, you’ll have a clear plan and something to work towards that you know will enable you to get your most important tasks done. Equally, if you see that you can’t physically fit anything else in, it’ll stop you accepting requests for calls or other small jobs that you just don’t have time for.
When you’re blocking out these tasks in your calendar, remember to be generous with the time you allocate to each task. Include some blank space so you have a little bit of flexibility if things take you longer than you’d originally expected. As freelancers and small business owners, we often overestimate how much we can do in the time we have available. Don’t fall into this trap or you might end up feeling overwhelmed all over again!
I hope these tips will help you get rid of those feelings of overwhelm the next time you have too much on your plate.
If you find that you often feel overwhelmed, you’re likely to benefit from my mentorship programme Shift to Success. Each quarter I take on a limited number of mentees 1:1 to help them make changes in their business so that their life looks the way they want it to.
If you’d like to break out of a cycle of overwhelm and take a step back so you can understand what’s really important to you, I’ll help you focus on the things that truly matter. Over the course of 3 months, we’ll make sure your business is acting to support your priorities so that you’re no longer working yourself into the ground but are developing a sustainable business that will help you achieve your long-term goals.