5 Ways to Lessen Overwhelm in Your Life
Find yourself feeling pulled in 100 different directions, struggling to focus on anything because there is just SO much grabbing for your attention? Girl, overwhelm should not be your normal.
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 5 practical ways to lessen overwhelm in your life
Now, I have a lot of tips I could share but I wanted to share ones that you can start implementing ASAP - these don’t take a ton of prep or time but they make a huge difference, especially when you combine them together.
01. Practice being present.
Raise your hand if you’re guilty of going through the motions instead of being fully present sometimes...I know you can’t see me but my hand is raised, lol.
What causes us to NOT be present? 2 things I think - being distracted and being overwhelmed.
Half the time, we don’t even realize that we are distracted because we’re so used to being distracted. Distractions create clutter - they cause our brains to be fuzzy - they rob us from being where our feet are (aka being present). The best way to identify distractions is by practicing being present.
Here’s what’s up - being present is a practice. You have to intentionally choose to be present every moment of every day. Will you be perfect at it? No. But the cool thing is, you have so many opportunities every day to try again.
So what does being present have to do with lessening overwhelm in your life?
Think about it - overwhelm is typically rooted in living in the future - you’re consumed by worrying how much you have to do eventually and you’re not focusing on what you can do in the present moment. I don’t know about you, but when I’m overwhelmed, that’s when distractions get the best of me.
Because distractions are a form of escape.
It’s an unhealthy cycle, right? We feel overwhelmed, we distract ourselves, we realize we’re not doing what we need to be doing, we get overwhelmed again. REPEAT.
When we practice being present, we can number 1, identify distractions so that we don’t fall into them which helps kick overwhelm and number 2, when we practice being present, we are less likely to feel overwhelmed, because remember, overwhelm is when we’re removing ourselves from the present moment to panic about what we have to do in the future.
My favorite way to practice being present is simple:
I stop what I’m doing, close my eyes, put my hand on my heart and take a few deep breaths. I use the senses approach that I learned in therapy:
What do I feel right now? How does the ground feel under my feet or the chair feel under my butt?
What do I hear right now?
What do I smell right now?
What do I taste right now?
Then I open my eyes and ask myself what do I see right now?
If you’ve never tried that approach for practicing being present, highly recommend - it honestly helps me so much!
So that’s your first tip for lessening overwhelm in your life - practice being present.
02. Have a Catch All Task List to lessen mental clutter.
Alright so as y’all know, as I learn and grow, I do my best to adapt what I teach you so that it’s the most helpful right? I used to call this a Master To-Do List but now I call it a Catch All Task List - I’ll be teaching in depth about it in the new course that’s coming out this fall - How to Create Your Peacefully Productive Schedule.
But here’s basically what it is and how to use it to help lessen overwhelm:
In a nutshell, it’s a space for you to keep track of tasks that need to be done as you think of them.
I separate mine into personal and professional sections. Then each section has a list of tasks that need to be done and if applicable, the date they need to be done by. Each task is ranked by priority level. Here is the key I use for assigning priority levels:
1: Top priority at this time
2: Would be nice to get done soon
3: Not a priority at this time
Having a task list that’s categorized by importance, that is separate from your daily task list, keeps you from feeling overwhelmed by staring at a long, running list every day. Y’all know that we use Focus 3 every day so we’re not spreading ourselves too thin or getting stressed about how much we have to do. We are focusing on giving our best time and energy on 3 tasks. Then, if you do have time and energy left after your Focus 3, you can do some of these less pressing tasks.
Having the Catch All Task List helps you not forget about tasks that do need to be done but they also aren’t being carried over from your task list day to day, causing unnecessary panic over a long AF daily to-do list. Plus, writing tasks down that are floating around in your mind clears mental clutter, freeing you up to focus on what matters most, you know?
Now you don’t look at this Catch All Task List every day, but instead, I recommend opening it up when you’re sitting down to plan your week to see if any of these tasks need to be one of your Top 3 priority tasks for that week. Make sense?
So some quick examples of things that I might put on this list:
Personal:
Get an oil change; no due date; priority level 2
Buy Adam anniversary gift; Due April 17; priority level 1
Professional:
Reformat Instagram highlights: no due date; priority level 3
Order packaging for journals; due May 14; priority level 1
So then when I sit down to plan my week, I’d see oh okay buying Adam’s anniversary gift and ordering the packaging for the journals are high priorities right now so I can make those 2 of my Top 3 priority tasks for the week.
P.S. The new planners will have this Catch All Task List built in, woooo!
So that’s the second thing you can do to help lessen overwhelm in your life: clear your mental clutter by having a Catch All Task List.
03. Create a weekly outline.
Whether you consider yourself a planner or not, you need to have a weekly outline because having one allows you to use less brain power figuring out what you need to be doing every week/day and that allows you to focus on actually doing what needs to be done. So you won’t be flying by the seat of your pants stressing over trying not to forget something.
In The Hustle Sanely Program, I teach the 5-Step Hustle Sanely Schedule Building Framework. I also share the framework in the new Hustle Sanely Handbook which is a 47-page e-book that is basically ALL things Hustle Sanely in one place.
But step 4 in that framework is exactly how I create my weekly outline. I’m gonna walk you through step 4 really quickly and maybe later this year I’ll do a whole podcast episode really breaking it down for y’all. So on Fridays (when I like to plan my week), I grab my planner and follow these steps to create a schedule that supports me:
01. Plug in your scheduled responsibilities.
02. Plug in your non-negotiable priorities and any supporting habits.
03. Determine and schedule your Top 3 tasks for the week.
04. Schedule your weekly rest.
05. Carve out space for margin + transitions.
Again, having this outline to follow every week, allows me to know that I’m living in alignment with the vision I have for my life, keeps me from feeling overwhelmed because I know where to spend my best time and energy every week.
So the third way for you to lessen overwhelm in your life - create a weekly outline.
04. Do a daily brain dump.
Okay so this one kind of goes along with the Catch All Task List but it’s more than just tasks - a brain dump is exactly what it sounds like - dumping your brain out onto paper (or a Google doc if you’re a digital babe) to clear the mental clutter in your brain.
Clutter stresses us out. Physical clutter and mental clutter. Clutter makes it hard to focus. It makes it hard to feel clarity. It makes it hard for us to be present, which as we learned earlier, just intensifies overwhelm.
I do a brain dump every single day - I honestly think of it as sweeping my brain - like getting rid of all the dust bunnies in there, unclogging my pipes, however you want to view it, lol.
I like to do it at the end of my day - in the evening. I use my brain dump list to help me create my schedule for the next day sometimes, too.
The kinds of things that I brain dump are random thoughts, tasks, and anything that might keep from unwinding in the evening and being present. Literally anything that I’m thinking that I don’t want to leave just floating around in my brain gets dumped. My brain dumps are not pretty - it’s usually slanted lines of chicken scratch but I always feel so much lighter when I get all of it out. It’s like a big exhale for your mind and it creates space for you to really enjoy your evening.
Oh and guess what? The new Peacefully Productive Journals that are coming out soon have a brain dump page for every single day...I seriously can’t wait for y’all to see them!!! And I’m more excited for you to have them in your hands this summer!
Alright, it’s not a secret that I live for super doable action steps. That’s what this next one is. It’s something you can do RIGHT NOW and it’s going to feel like such a relief, I’m telling you. The fifth and final thing you can do to lessen overwhelm in your life:
05. Get rid of one thing right now that is stressing you out.
Forreal! I challenge you to cut out something that causes you stress. Inside the Hustle Sanely Program, I teach my students to use the Do It Differently, Ditch It, or Delegate it method. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this on the show before, too.
But basically, you pinpoint what is stressing you out, then you decide what you’re gonna do about it.
Do it differently: You can’t completely axe whatever it is so you need to change how you're doing it
Ditch it: Get rid of it
Delegate it: Ask for help or get support with it
Think abut one thing that is causing stress in your life right now and choose to do it differently, ditch it, or delegate it!
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 077 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to listen into this topic:
