Earlier today, I read this HBR post about 5 Things to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed by Your Workload. The author shares the following strategies about what we can do to not feel overwhelmed.
1. Breathe. Slowly. And change your self talk.
2. Track your time to understand how busy you really are.
3. Check your assumptions about other people’s expectations.
4. Examine your assumptions about what success requires
5. Start taking time off now instead of waiting for the “right” time
All of these are very valid ways to attempt when you are feeling overwhelmed by your work. These are all strategies to be used after the fact of becoming overwhelmed and help us stay out of water.
I would much rather never get into a situation when I start feeling overwhelmed.
Following is my strategy to not get overwhelmed. This is still a work-in-progress:
- Reflect
- Accept
- Impact
- Decline
Reflect:
One of the things that I do that has shown to be extremely useful is to reflect. Every Friday afternoon, I schedule time for myself to reflect upon the week that passed by. Some questions that I try to answer in this time are:
- What was the most important work that I did in the week?
- What was the most impactful work did I do in the week?
- What was the most important work that I missed doing in the week? Why?
- What was the most impactful work that I missed doing in the week? Why?
- Given a chance, would I still do the same work that I did in the week or would I rather do somethings differently? Why?
This reflection on a weekly basis allows me to re-group if I am being swayed away from doing the most important and impactful work that I am capable of doing.
Accept:
I accept the fact that there will be days when you are able to do impactful and important work. Then there will be days when you will be putting out fires and do work that is neither important nor impactful. As long as the former far out-numbers the latter, it is ok. We all have good days and bad days.
We just need to accept this fact and move on. No point in getting too worked up about this. It only leads to more stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Impact:
In order to be extremely effective and productive (and in that order), we need to first decide what is it that is important to us and what is it that we do or bring to the table that leads to our most impactful work.
This could be in the form of our goals or some leading indicator of our goals. This could also be different from the goals but one’s that if done well will help us achieve all our goals. Ideally, we don’t have a long list of such activities. It is always under three. These are our keystone tasks. They take precedence over everything else.
Decline:
One very important skill to develop is the ability to politely decline. When I reflect on times when I have been extremely stressed or overwhelmed at work, most of the times it has been due to me taking on stuff that was neither important nor impactful and neither increased my effectiveness at work. These are the times when I took on work that I should not have taken on. I took on responsibility that I should have declined.
By declining this work, I would have helped both of us. I would not have been overwhelmed and the other person would not have to deal with an overwhelmed person delivering less than he/she was capable of. They could have potentially got better results had they found someone for whom that work was important or where they could create an impact.
The ability to decline a request is like a muscle. The more you exercise, the stronger the muscle gets. I am not recommending helping people out or supporting your teammates. What I am recommending is to be responsible when doing that and to be aware of such situations and not let them to overwhelm you.
In Conclusion:
In conclusion, I would only say the following – our feeling of overwhelm is only caused when there is too much to process. Consistent reflection on our work and course correction when needed almost always keeps overwhelm at bay.
PS: You can buy my latest book – Thrive: Mindsets & Skillsets needed to succeed in a world dominated by smart machines & intelligent algorithms
