S7E17 - How to Handle Overwhelm
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Shawn Buttner: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to the Meaningful Revolution Podcast.
I am your host and certified high performance coach, Shawn Buttner. This episode is all about how to handle overwhelm. And by the end of this episode, you'll gain five habits and strategies to help you manage overwhelm so you can thrive in a hectic, And fast paced world.
Now we all experience overwhelm. And as a coach, I often get questions about how to better manage it. And just this past week, I got a text from someone who had a new job as a manager and wanted to know how she could manage the overwhelm of this new job as an introverted leader. And as someone that is a card carrying introvert themselves, I really [00:01:00] resonated with this question because, sometimes if you're an introvert, the world's not made for us to thrive, right?
We have to get out of our shell, we have to engage with people, but overwhelm affects everyone, not just introverts. And what causes overwhelm? overwhelm could be the, your capacity to perform. It's less than the amount of work you're being asked to do. So if you are a new software engineer and you're asked to program a whole operating system and you don't have the experience to do that, that can help you or make you feel overwhelmed or as an imposter or just not confident enough to be up to the task.
And so you get caught up in figuring out where do I start? Or Overwhelm could be your self confidence is less than the belief that you can perform and this is if you were [00:02:00] running for a marathon and you'd never run before, you're like, I don't know if I can actually do this and if you don't believe that you can figure it out that you are able to figure things out, that's when Overwhelm can creep in or it could be Overwhelm.
You've been grinding, right? There's blood, there's sweat, there's tears, and you're not getting the breaks that you need to actually have the performance outcomes you want. So your rest and rejuvenation time is not existent. And if you've ever been on a doom project where you've been going in like 80 hours a week for three or four years, four months, I had A couple of bad projects in my time as a software engineer that really impacts performance time and your will to live, quite frankly.
So how do you overcome overwhelm in that type of scenario? And the final thing that I've seen, and [00:03:00] usually when people come to me with overwhelm, is that they're just under resourced, right? You're capable, you know you can figure it out. But there are tight or impossible deadlines or a really horrible estimation of the amount of effort it'll take to do something.
And so it could feel like no matter what you do on the job or towards the project, there's no progress being made. And that can be frustrating and overwhelming at the same time. when we get into these different types of overwhelm, what are the strategies we can use to help manage or get out of that overwhelm?
And these are things that I've shared with my coaching clients over time. The first thing, first and foremost, as a high performance coach, I'm a little bit biased, but it's to increase our performance, and Certified High Performance Coach is great for this in that we talk about, blocking [00:04:00] time or focusing on priorities or being okay if the number one thing is Causes other things to drop, but, increasing our capacity to perform our capabilities, our competency is one way to, to get the experience we need to be like, Oh, I can't handle this.
I just, and maybe proving it for the first time. And The reason why a coach is really great for this is sometimes it's a little adjustment or little insight, or just shifting a couple of things around. Where your, maybe your capacity is greater than you think. And a lot of the work that I do is helping people realize that for themselves.
And I believe that for you too. for someone that is listening to a podcast called The Meaningful Revolution, you are someone that is capable of great things and is capable of taking on a lot more than you believe. And this is also just a side note. It's a message for [00:05:00] myself. I am in this with you.
I also deal with overwhelm a lot in running a business and trying to do my best for clients. And remembering that I am capable of getting everything done is a reminder of myself. The second thing to remember and the second strategy to do is we need to increase our belief in ourselves, our self confidence.
And this comes from a mindset of you can figure out anything with enough time and coffee. That's my favorite phrase. Marie Forleo has a great book called Everything is Figureoutable. And what this is really telling us to do is to get into action and get data, right? so if we don't think we're Capable of rising to the occasion.
Really, it's a fear, an untested fear, right? You won't actually know until you're in it and doing things. [00:06:00] And then, you'll get the learning to make the adjustments, so much of self confidence is our past experience of handling hardship. And so those moments, if you think back to the moments where you rose to the occasion where you showed up as your best self and was able to get through a tough project, a tough situation, that is going to help you be like, Oh, okay, maybe I got this and reminding ourselves that we've had success and adversity can help us get to that next level of performance or Take figure out that overwhelm.
And something I love to do with clients is this self coaching exercise, where if you're driving, don't do this, but if you're able to, stand or sit nobly and close your eyes and imagine your future self Five years in the future [00:07:00] that is ten times more successful, ten times more relaxed, ten times more happy, ten times more just together, right?
If you can picture that future version of yourself with your eyes closed, sitting or standing right next to you right now, what would that person tell you right now to get through the thing that's very overwhelming? And I love this. Exercise, self coaching exercise as a coach because a lot of times people know what they need from the world or they just need permission and this is a way for them to, get out of their head a little bit.
if you were advising a friend in the same situation as that future best self, what would you advise your friend? These are a couple of different angles, but usually the insights to that, the answer to that question are very profound and unlocks a lot of things for people where they're like, oh, I can get this, right?
Oh, this is just part of the struggle. This is part of the [00:08:00] process of growing, and I can figure this out. And so it's really great for building that self confidence and to get into the actions that we need to do to thrive. Okay? The third strategy is broadly called take care of your body. And so a lot of times when we're overwhelmed, we feel stress.
And if we don't handle that stress with exercise and movement or taking breaks. it can impact our sleep, and if you hit your sleep, that's usually the number one thing that makes people miserable. If you're not getting, the average, recommendation is seven hours for adults, if you're not hitting that seven hour mark each night, that would be the one thing to take care of first.
And I, I promise you, Even if you're someone who thinks that they can get on with, one or two hours of sleep a night for the whole, year. there are people maybe [00:09:00] built that way, but the data shows that's very few people. And if you're feeling overwhelmed, try getting more sleep as the number one thing.
And I think just that level of rest, of physically feeling like you, are good or great can change that feeling overwhelmed quite dramatically. The fourth thing to do if you're feeling overwhelmed is to get help, right? And that could be Delegating some tasks that you don't really need to do if it's not your life's work or not the things that are really driving value in the projects or business endeavors or market things that you're doing.
if it's not something that you have to do to drive those things, get a teammate to help or delegate to a family member or whatever your situation is. But if you don't have anyone to delegate to or it's all super important things. You might need help redefining the [00:10:00] project triangle, and if you've done any project management, you know what this is.
If you haven't, there's generally three areas that you can shift on a project. It's the quality of it, okay, let me take that back. It's the scope of the project or what it's going to accomplish. So that could be, it's going to be this amount of code. It could be this marketing report. It could be this set of, meetings that are set up for a giant conference.
So what are you actually going to deliver? It's going to be cost, Are you going to need to hire a hundred million people to get it done, or just five, or,that's one of the areas of a project, or are you going to mess with the time, right? It's okay maybe if you have to deliver a lot with a small team if you have three years to deliver on the project.
But if time is a driving [00:11:00] factor, where there's a deadline, or you need this done in a week, and it's just you, Maybe adding people onto the project and help. And so if you're in an organization with a project manager, it's clarifying what's going to get dropped or what's going to get moved to make sure that the project's getting managed properly.
If you're a solopreneur or business owner yourself, it could just be resetting your expectations and really thinking through, do I have enough time? Allocated to this based on the resource level or things that I'm trying to accomplish and sometimes just being like, Oh, like all of these things are jammed.
I have a million things to do. It's only me and I need it done next week. Like something has to give, just thinking through it in that way can be very helpful and just Oh, it's going to take three times the amount of time because I can't change. What it delivers. I can't change that. It's only me working on it.
Make sense? [00:12:00] so getting help either by redefining that project triangle or Finding people to delegate or to eliminate things off of your task list are really going to help with that feeling overwhelmed And then finally the fifth thing to tie it all together is to create thoughtful systems You know, so many, some people call it discipline, some people call it consistency, I think, methodically having a rhythm, a daily rhythm, a weekly rhythm, and a monthly rhythm to manage information, to manage your productive outputs, those meaningful pursuits that you do, your health, and building your confidence is essential.
And what do I mean by that? It could be like your daily routine is you wake up, you have a certain couple of things you do to get your body ready in the morning, maybe you go for a run, maybe you eat a great breakfast, maybe you journal, maybe you read a little bit, or something of that nature. Then when you get [00:13:00] to work, maybe you identify the one thing that needs to get done that week, and then the one thing you have to do today, and so you spend the first hour of your workday working on that.
And then after that you do any reach out you need to do, and then you have the last half of the day to fight fires or do anything else that is required, right? So that would be like a daily rhythm. Like you wake up, you do your morning routine, you get into your first part of your day routine, you have the rest of your day routine, you have the routine when you get home and then before bed, and that's your daily rhythm.
for that, your weekly rhythm might be on, you might say on Monday, it's all reaching out to people on important projects or clients or, doing more social communication the second day, maybe it's planning the third day. Maybe it's building all the things that you need to create.
You're focusing on your creative or, important outputs. [00:14:00] Maybe Thursday and Friday are all meetings. And, servicing clients, and this is roughly how my week works, which is why I'm talking that out loud. So what are your weekly habits? So what is the focus of each day during the week? maybe on Saturdays, it's your long run day, right?
And then, when Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday is just your like normal run days, right? are those weekly habits for your health, for your career, for your relationship, and for your well beings and thinking through that and getting it on a calendar can be very empowering and just having things a bit organized, right?
monthly habits, right? So maybe it's the first week of the month is all planning, and what you're doing is you're comparing your project plans and making sure that you're saying no to the right things or you're adjusting course. it could be the monthly reports you send to your clients or your management or to yourself to manage what's [00:15:00] going on.
And that's what I mean by thoughtful systems. It's these daily, weekly, and monthly rhythms. and habits that help you perform and help you manage all the information and outputs. Okay. So pretty cool, right? I'd love if you are have any questions or comments, you can sign up on our newsletter, which is linked below.
You'd get an email from me saying, Hey, welcome to the newsletter. And you'll get updates on episodes like this every week. And you can also ask questions. So if you hit reply to any of those emails, if you have a question on this episode or any others, I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can. And I'd love to hear from you, right?
So please do that. If you like this episode, share it with two or three people. Who you think need to help, need help with overwhelm. And then the third thing to [00:16:00] really think about today is if you need that extra amount of help, if you're feeling overwhelmed. The quickest way to feel more in control, more proactive, and more on top of everything is to talk to a certified high performance coach, and lucky for you, I have a certified high performance coach, and I'd love to help.
So you can apply for a free one hour strategy session at TheMeaningfulRevolution. com backslash coach. That link is below in the show notes also, and what that'll do is you'll go through a quick Questionnaire, about 15 minutes, if you're thoughtful about it, and it'll help you think through your performance, help you get into the high performance mindset, and then we schedule a call after you fill that out, and on that call, we build a personalized plan that'll help you with whatever you're focused on in life right now, family, work, health, or well being, and whatever, wherever you're feeling overwhelmed, and we'll sit together and [00:17:00] Build you a plan with high performance habits, custom to your life, and people love this call.
I'd love to help you in that way. I'd love to be your high performance coach someday too, so take me up on that call. If not, just keep sharing this with people that might need to hear about the meaningful revolution and, if you find it helpful. I'd love to hear from you. So with that said, guys, go forth and live into your purposeful pursuits.
And we'll see you next week on the Meaningful Revolution podcast.