Task Overwhelm: What it is? Why it is? How one overcomes it?

We all lead busy lives—fast-paced, unstoppable, full of worries. Most of us have little to no space for relaxation in our timetables. Especially in these trying times, when the pandemic has pretty much got everyone’s speed halted momentarily, people have a lot piling up for themselves. It happens more often than never that we do not feel like doing something or anything. We put off stuff for later; thinking will get to it later. The latter doesn’t come until really late, though. But hey, that project has got to be submitted. The deadline must be met at all costs. What is that ‘cost,’ exactly? Our mental well-being, since the stress we go through when we don’t know where to start or what to begin with, this suffering has a name, Task Overwhelm.

Most of us are familiar with the endless cycle of, ‘why did I do this?’, ‘I knew I should have done it then only!’, ‘I am such a loser!’, ‘I should have never trusted myself with this,’ or the worst one, ‘I cannot do this. Maybe I should just give up’’’

Yeah, let us now check out how do we break this cycle, or better yet, prevent it altogether.

Also read: World Class Tools To Make The‘‘Procastination’ Urg’ Easy

What is Task Overwhelm and Why does it happen?

In layman terms, task overwhelm is when you have not gotten around completely things you are supposed to complete and now they have piled up stack-high, leaving you wondering will you ever be able to do this and how did it even get this way? You feel ‘overwhelmed’, as the name suggests, with your to-do list, which then leads to a lot of self-criticisms, as touched upon in the introduction.

Now that that is out of the way, here are some things you can do when you have just been hit with your long-ass to-do list.

What To Do When Faced With Task Overwhelm

The Eisenhower Matrix

The name might sound intimidating but let me explain it to you, but before, some context.

When we are faced with so many things to do, all at once, our brain goes into active mode. We get anxious and stressed. The adrenaline rush this stress induces turns our lousy being into a robot. We become a do-er now. No rest, no time-outs, no planning, just go, go and go! Do the first thing that comes to your mind. In between, if you find something which you think will take less time, leave the current task at hand and complete that one first. Why do we do this? Because we just want to tick things off of the list. Like, done, done, done! Our brain doesn’t prioritize.

But Iddon’tdon’te you. You have put off so many things that if not today then never. After all, everything needs to be done, right now and who else besides you will do them? Right?

Wrong.

What we refuse to understand is, it is of immense importance to sit down and prioritize things on the list. It will take about a good hour, yes. But what that will do is, give you so much clarity on what exactly needs to be done and when.

Internalize these 3 things carefully:

1. Not everything must be done by you today.
2. Not everything must be done by you.
3. Not everything must be done.

Whenever you are faced with a situation such as this, sit down, relax and jot down everything that comes to your mind, which needs to be completed. I like to call it a ‘Brain Dump’ and boy, has it saved me ever since I started doing it!

Once you have the list in your hand, against every single task, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does this need to be done?
2. Does this need to be done by me?
3. Does this need to be done by me today?

Once you are done, you will be surprised at how has your tasks at hand have reduced from like a 100 to a 20 or even 10! Many tasks you will find don’t need to be done. Some you needn’t do yourself and others, not today.

Now that you have your work cut out for you, let’s move further.

Take Help

Do you remember the tasks on the list that you don’t need to do by yourself? Yeah, take help to complete them since they still need to be done after all!

For example, if you feel you have got to do your taxes but do not have the time to do them or don’t know how to, ask a good friend to help you out. Or hire an accountant who will do them for you, that too in a professional manner.

Another example would be, if your house is a mess, and you do not have the time to clean it yourself, you can call up an agency to either send in a cleaning service or hire a house-help who would come in and do routine cleaning.

Avoid distractions

It is absolutely important to be in the right mental space for you to get aboard with the work-at-hand for optimum results. What I love to do is:

Put up some good music on my speaker.

I absolutely love my playlist because it takes my mind off of the stress which hinders my performance. If you wish to hear it, click here.

I then start cleaning my immediate space.

Cleaning has always been therapeutic to me. If the place where I am supposed to work in is clean and spotless, I am more likely to get better end results, quickly. Also, lighting a scented candle, or switching on an aroma diffuser with essential oils is an added boost, not to mention the health benefits of Aromatherapy.

Put my phone on DND allowing only select contacts to call/text.

This is only for the time being when I will be working on the task. I find this prevents me from constantly checking my phone which might take my mind off of what I am supposed to be doing.

Leave Perfectionism At The Door

There is nothing wrong with wanting your finished product to be flawless. You worked hard on it; it should be free of errors. What creates a problem is trying too hard and spending too much time to bettering what probably is already at an optimal stage.

Also, sometimes it is just necessary to accept the pass. Perhaps you had planned on organizing an extravagant dinner party for your sister’s birthday this weekend. Also, you have a few pages long blog planned that you wished to post yesterday but is still unfinished.

Again, in this situation, you have got to prioritize one over another.

Case 1: Yes, your sister will be over-the-moon with that glamourous dinner you wish to host, but the blog is equally important and cannot be compromised on. Perhaps your sister will be happy with a not-so-huge dinner but a relatively smaller one with fewer people.

Case 2: Yes, that blog article initially planned on being super extensive must be out this week, but you promised your sister this party. Maybe that blog doesn’t have to be as comprehensive after all. You can break it up into parts and upload the first, relatively short one tomorrow evening, which will fetch you a couple of extra days to plan and host your sister’s birthday dinner.

This was one such dilemma that might lead to the overwhelm you are feeling. Sometimes giving in and letting a few things pass simplifies a situation to a huge extent. You will thank yourself for it.

Time blocking

Now this one could be a bit difficult for most, including me since this is something that would need extreme discipline.

What do we need to do? It is exactly like the class schedule we had when in school. Slots with the period and exact tasks to be covered in that period are allocated for the day. Everything needs to be done accordingly.

Similarly, when we are overwhelmed, we print out a calendar for each day and allocate time and tasks to each time window.

For reference, look at the following picture.

You can probably now understand why this is difficult for most. This is the least flexible method and if by chance anything urgent comes up unexpectedly, it will be quite difficult for you to move things around without stressing yourself out.

I personally wouldn’t recommend this but if you are already really short on time, this probably will be the most effective method to work with.

Embrace the Pareto Principle

Huh? This has rules now?

Don’tDon’t. It might sound all serious and even more overwhelming to abide by rules at this point but hear me out.

The Pareto Principle, named after the esteemed economist Vilfredo Pareto, specifies that 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes which leads to an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs.

In basic terms, the balance between our efforts and the results we get is seldom equal. According to Pareto, the maximum results we desire will stem from a very minimal amount of effort. Hence this principle is also called the 80/20 rule.

Originally derived to accommodate the land ownership in Italy, it states that the minority actually owns the majority.

Although this concept is broadly applied, it goes without saying that not every scenario will be fitting this criterion. But when it comes to task overwhelm, this principle works pretty darn well from what I have seen and experienced.

How, though?

When you list out everything that you need to do, analyze what you have in your hands for a good few minutes. You will find you have a few broad-spectrum tasks and some short-hand tasks. How this will help you is, you will find that there are many tasks that come under the umbrella of a few select tasks. These tasks are called short-hand tasks and the shadowing tasks are the broad spectrum tasks. Once you complete the broad spectrum tasks, you wouldn’t want to do the smaller tasks separately, since they are already done!

For example, you have a food blog that you need to upload every alternate day. But at the same time, you have guests coming over, and you got to impress them. Hence, everything must be perfect. So, you cook the food for them, wow them with your cooking skills, alongside clicking pictures of the food you cooked and posting them on your blog with the recipe and cooking time.

Or, if you have a YouTube channel for cooking/food reviews, while you are cooking for the guests, shoot the whole process and edit it once the guests are gone to post.

Voila! The guests are swooped with your amazing home-cooked meals plus you gave got excellent content too. What more? You will have first-hand reviews of the dishes you made and plated from the guests, which you can further post on your video post/website. This will give your viewers even more confidence in trying out your recipes and recommending them to others. Even more beneficial if your guests are food critics themselves. They might even promote your channel/website.

Conclusion

So, you see, task overwhelm is nothing but your mind getting overworked and confused about what to do and what not to do. What to prioritize and what to leave alone or for later. When you calm yourself and pause to breathe for a second, you will realize that you need to declutter your mind.

Everyone goes through overwhelming stages every once in a while, you are not alone. But how you make sense of the chaos and come up with a masterpiece will essentially determine how successful your task will be and how farther you will go in your field.

Have faith and keep up the hustle!

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Stay home, stay safe.