Dealing with Overwhelm as a Business Owner
“Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” - Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
It’s a quintessential Gen X movie, and while life moved pretty fast in the 80s, it’s definitely faster now. Or it feels that way at any rate.
Welcome to the Overwhelm Club! Is your special hangout the firehose of information that never seems to turn off? Having too many people around you (or going to too many events)? Too many things to do at work and/or at home, or racing thoughts?
Overwhelm functions as a distraction, which makes it hard to have a productive day. It’s hard to deal with in the moment… but some of the things that are keeping you overwhelmed can be prevented when you have the right boundaries in place.
Are you always going to be successful in avoiding it? Not by a long shot, unless you move to some rural area somewhere with no internet and no need to work a job. Understanding and attacking the common causes of overwhelm can help you reduce the amount you’re feeling, though.
In order to reduce overwhelm, you’ll need to be intentional about your time management skills and what’s essential for you to accomplish. This does not involve squeezing out more from every second you’re working, because that leads to burnout. Instead, find more balance.
Restrain information overload for a more productive day
Ever since 24/7 news and smartphones were invented, the world is now awash in information. Not all of it is helpful or useful, or even true. But the sheer amount of info, misinfo, and disinfo can be overwhelming. But what business owners need is knowledge, not just more data points.
You have to be the one to set boundaries. First of all, unless you work for the news, there is absolutely no reason to have news notifications. There’s news all the time all over the world, and you don’t need to know every time something happens. After all, the vast majority of the time, there’s absolutely nothing that you can do about it.
You don’t need to leave the news channels screening in your office. I’m especially talking to you, financial advisors! You don’t allow the crawl to determine your own decisions, if you’re any good, so don’t let it influence your clients either. There’s no reason for you to constantly have a browser tab open to the news, or your phone to the news. It’s only a distraction, not knowledge.
Your phone should absolutely never be the first thing you look at in the morning, or the last thing you see at night. There’s nothing you can do about anything at 11 pm, so why make yourself stress over it?
Get an alarm clock instead of using your phone, and charge your phone in a different room. The blue light emitted from the device makes it harder to go to sleep.
The firehose of info is headed your way, and it’s your job, whether you like it or not, to come up with a strategy for diverting it or converting it into a trickle. Once you’ve figured it out, you’ll be surprised how much more of your brain is available for thinking.
Is “peopling” getting in the way of a productive day?
I originally thought this was more true for introverts, but extroverts who spend too much time chatting with colleagues or going to networking events have a similar issue.
When we came back after the pandemic, I was so excited to see all the people and do all the things that I loaded up my calendar. Boy, was that a mistake. I wore myself out so fast.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs have a specific kind of FOMO: if you don’t go to ALL THE THINGS networking, then you’re going to miss out on a key connection that you could have made.
But is that true? Maybe there are some people who will only ever appear at one event in your life, who would be the absolute perfect client and/or referral partner for you. And if you don’t go that one time, they disappear forever. Maybe.
More likely, you’ll see them at another event, since people who network tend to go to multiple events. You’ll find other clients and referral partners along the way.
Another “peopling” issue is determining who gets to interrupt you and when. As business owners, we need time to focus on working ON the business, in addition to any work we’re doing IN the business.
That focus requires us to pay attention to the work for some period of time, in order to accomplish the things that move the business forward.
If you have an always-open-door policy, then you’re often interrupted when you’re trying to focus. And it takes a while to get back to where you were. Yes, good leaders have open doors - sometimes. They don’t allow others to control their time.
To have a workable open-door policy, you could:
Institute office hours, where anyone on the team can drop in for any reason. Obviously, this is not during your focus time.
Schedule closed-door time on the calendar, during which no one can interrupt unless there’s a true emergency, like the building’s on fire.
Have both open hours and closed-door time on your calendar, ensuring that both times are respected and not moved around willy-nilly.
As always, it’s about setting the right boundaries for you. And prioritizing.
Is your to-do list too-long?
If your daily list is over five items, it’s too long. Note that I said daily list – you might have a “want to do” list that has many items on it, but looking at it all the time makes you feel overwhelmed. There’s no way you can get through it all in one day, so when you look at your giant list and see how few items you crossed off, you feel like you’re not getting anything done.
A smaller daily list forces you to prioritize and be realistic. Unless some tasks are genuinely tiny and can be completed in 15 minutes no matter what, you can’t get more than three to five important tasks done in a day.
Maybe you’ve got a big project that can’t be completed in one day. Break it into smaller chunks that can be accomplished in a day or two. This tip also helps with procrastination, because you’ve got a manageable chunk and you know it’s doable. You have to be realistic.
Have you ever watched the show Hoarders? So many are people who have hundreds of “projects” lying around. Which is why they “need” a stack of materials that reaches the ceiling.
But no person has infinite time on the planet. Mathematically, there’s no way for all of those things to get done. The hoarders are not going to get to the 600 projects they have lying around, nor are you likely to get to the hundreds of items on your list.
What’s reasonable, what’s doable, and most importantly, what are the things that you genuinely want to do? Yes, there are a few things that you may need to take care of out of a sense of obligation or duty. But make sure you’re still leaving time for the pleasurable things.
A few things you do need to have most days of the week that feed your brain (and therefore your productivity):
Sleep, 7-8 hours a night
Brain breaks during the day
Physical movement
Nourishing food
Time with loved ones
Play time
Reclaim your time from racing thoughts
Everyone has a lot to think about, and that’s why we all end up walking into the kitchen (or other room of your choice) and saying blankly, What did I come in here for? Your brain prefers to single-task, and the more you can focus, the less your thoughts race.
Many people find that their mind tends to go bananas right before bed. Your brain likes to hang on to things that are unfinished, which is why they pop up when you slow down at the end of the night. Writing down your thoughts, especially before bed, is a great way to calm those thoughts.
You’ve got everything written down so your brain doesn’t feel like it has to hold on to everything. When you write (not type) everything, you won’t have so many “What about this?” and “What about that?” thoughts.
To that end, it’s also a good practice to end every workday by writing down the priorities for the next day. Not 10 or 20 things, because those aren’t priorities, they’re just a list of stuff to do that you probably can’t finish. Instead, what are the handful of things (3 to 5 items) that will move you forward? Write those down.
You can also try some form of meditation to learn how to observe your thoughts instead of getting caught up in them. Then, when your mind starts to churn, you can observe it. By getting above the fray, you won’t be so troubled by all the thoughts racing around because you can let them go.
Recap (tl;dr):
It’s easy to be overwhelmed. There are some practices you can try in the moment, but it’s better to prevent the overwhelm from happening. The key to reducing the amount of overwhelm in your life is to be mindful and intentional about setting up systems to prevent it.
Need help setting up those systems to be productive in your business? That’s where I come in. Schedule your free consultation hereto see if I’m a good fit to help.