How to Keep Yourself from Becoming Overwhelmed

Are you tired of becoming overwhelmed?

What would it take for you to live more often in serenity and less often becoming overwhelmed?

It’s a common greeting — “How are you?”

You can almost predict the response. “Busy. Keeping busy.”

Imagine saying, “Well, rested, and focused.”

Overwhelm is a choice. Perhaps more insidious, it distracts from the important. Overwhelm is the urgent that competes with — and often wins — in the daily war with the important.

What’s Your Destination?

What life do you want to live in three months, six months, one year, three years? With the vision of your future self in mind, take a lesson from the British Rowing Team.

The story goes that the British Rowing Team’s performance was not producing wins. Something had to change, so the team adopted a practice to filter everything they did both personally and as a team through the question, “Will this make the boat go faster?”

• Does taking part in Friday night’s frat party before Saturday’s race make the boat go faster?
• Will binging chips and soda make the boat go faster?
• Does consistently skipping sleep make the boat go faster?

What are you doing that keeps you from moving toward your goal? To your ideal future?

Often, the key to achieving the life you want is to stop doing the things that keep you from your goal. Overwhelm is rooted in an overfull calendar as well as the deep frustration we feel when investing time, energy, and finances into things that are not aligned with our values. When we think that if we just get this urgent matter taken care of so we can focus on the important, the feeling of overwhelm is certainly present.

Moving Forward

The first step away from overwhelm is choosing what you won’t do. “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything,” said John Maxwell.

 In his book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown defines productivity as a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making the execution of those important things nearly effortless. In other words, our focus is not on how to get more things done, but on getting the right things done.

How can you make the wisest possible investment of time and energy to operate at your highest point of contribution?

Steve Jobs said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

What You Won’t Do

What you choose not to do may be more important than what you do. To get started, here are tasks not to do that can help you move forward.

Don’t:

Neglect your health.

Good health contributes to optimum clarity, energy, and productivity. Establish a simple morning and evening routine that automatically includes:

• Daily movement
• A regular schedule that assures seven to eight hours of sleep
• Stillness for Bible reading and prayer
• Solitude to listen to God
• A day each week to do what refreshes your soul
• Nutrition-rich foods to fuel your body

Tolerate decision fatigue.

What can you automate, eliminating the need to spend time and energy making decisions?

Steve Jobs eliminated the morning decision-making around what to wear. Daily, Jobs wore a long-sleeve t-shirt and jeans. Another businessperson hangs outfits in a row and wears the first on Monday, the next on Tuesday, and so on. Doing so means not wasting time trying on several combinations, so your thoughts are free to pursue more important issues.

Establish a morning routine that includes the tasks vital to setting up your day for success. The most successful people rise early to journal, study, pray, eat well, and often exercise. They begin their workday prepared, refreshed, and having invested in their most valuable resource — themselves. Waking at the last minute, grabbing coffee, and dashing to work produces a day founded on reacting to demands rather than responding to them thoughtfully and purposefully. Preparation reduces stress, which reduces overwhelm.

Automate finances by setting up regular contributions to savings and investments. Use auto bill pay to take that task off your to-do list.

Let your calendar remind you of important dates such as birthdays and anniversaries far enough in advance to respond in a timely manner.

Set reminders on your phone that build simplicity into your life from car maintenance to dental visits and the annual chimney cleaning.

Give or receive shame.

Words can be life-giving, or words can overwhelm with shame. Quick shifts that provide immediate results are to eliminate negative self-talk. Speak to yourself the same kindness and grace you give to someone you love.

From your vocabulary, eliminate criticizing, complaining, condemning, and excusing.

Trim the words should, need to, ought to, and must from your speech. Replace words such as:

• “I should…”
• “I need to…”
• “I ought to…”
• “I must…”

with “I choose to” for those actions that align with your values and goals.

Slow your boat.

Being overly busy and overwhelmed shows that we pursue easier paths to the less important ones. Before adding to the calendar, ask,

• Does this align with my values?
• Does this move my life and goals forward?

For example, one friend never attends home parties. If she likes the product, she gives her order but reserves the time on her calendar for her priorities.

Another professional gives gifts in the form of thoughtful donations to special causes in the recipient’s name. This allows the individual to bypass shopping, deciding, wrapping, shipping, and adding to clutter.

Panic

Panic can happen when things don’t turn out as you planned — Do they ever? Confident that God is at work even in this, take in what He is teaching you about His character in this setting.

Defining where you want your future to be and eliminating everything that distracts from the goal is not easy. If it were, more people would do what they feel is important, instead of wrestling through the urgent hoping to get to the important.

What is on your “won’t do” list?

Living in overwhelm is the antithesis of the life we want. Overwhelm chips away at our health and happiness. Armed with your list of what you won’t do, remove nonessentials that steal the time and energy you need to operate at your highest point of contribution.

Decide you won’t do those sidetracking time and energy stealers that do not align with your values and goals. Filter everything you do personally and corporately through the question, “Will this make my boat go faster? Will this make my life better?”

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