Cope with being overwhelmed

Tips from Designing Your Work Life for surviving busy times

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about how to cope with being overwhelmed.
By recognizing the exact nature of your overwhelming situation, you
can take steps to make life feel more in control.

(00:27):
Today's tip comes from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans new
book Designing Your Work Life, the follow up to Design
Your Life. This book teaches how to use design principles
to improve your time at the office. We've probably all
been in bad jobs, but in many cases Burnett and
Evans right, people find themselves in jobs that they generally like.

(00:48):
It's just that circumstances are stressful. These stressful circumstances come
in different flavors, which Burnett and Evans call the hydra overwhelmed,
the happy overwhelmed, and the hyper overwhelm. They required different
steps to mitigate The hydra overwhelm takes its name from

(01:08):
the multi headed Greek monster that grew new heads every
time one was chopped off. Perhaps this feels a bit
like your life if you work in a place that
has been made lean to the point where everybody is
doing the equivalent of two to three jobs. Maybe you're
reporting to too many managers or running too many projects simultaneously.
Maybe you're having to pull information from too many sources,

(01:31):
or you have to use legacy systems that are cumbersome
and badly designed. The happy overwhelm is when you just
have too much of a good thing going on. You've
volunteered for all the cool, shiny stuff. You love all
of it, but you are one person with twenty four
hours in a day, and it is physically impossible to
work for all of them. And finally, the hyper overwhelm

(01:55):
happens in startup situations where there are no organizational norms
and very little support. It's not that you're reporting to
two different managers. It's that you really aren't sure who
your manager is because you're growing so fast that there's
no organization chart. Anyway, when you find yourself overwhelmed, ask
yourself if it's a hydra, happy or hyper kind of overwhelmed,

(02:19):
and then you can figure out what to do. If
it's hydra, you can either drop tasks or ask permission
to drop ones that are hurting your productivity. In the
permission conversations be specific. Burnett and Evans right say, that
you will be more productive if you can use the
version of your software versus the version that you're stuck with,

(02:42):
or if you can write a monthly report instead of
a weekly one, or if you can split your clients
into a's and bees, with the a's getting responses in
twenty four hours and the bees getting responses in ninety
six hours. Most managers are happy to have people propose
solutions to their problems, so you don't need to fear
this converse station As for happy overwhelmed, well, the problem

(03:04):
here is that you may have a tougher boss yourself.
You've chosen to do all these amazing things, and you
are now paying the price. The solution here is often
to start delegating. Figure out which of these tasks you
are uniquely qualified to do and which can be given
to someone else. Maybe with you editing or approving at work,

(03:27):
you can ask for more resources, people, budgets, and so forth.
At home, maybe you can hire a cleaning service, send
out the laundry, or hire a personal assistant. The point
is to multiply your existing hours, because you are not
going to magically get more. Finally, for the hyper overwhelmed,
Burnett and Evans recommend thinking of the situation as a

(03:50):
marathon rather than a sprint. Run the mile you're in,
take care of yourself, making sure that your non negotiables
like sleep and exercise happen, and finally, change your story
rather than I'm frantic because I have no idea what
I'm doing. You could repeat it's so exciting to be
figuring this all out. Positive thoughts go a long way

(04:13):
in all of these situations. Check in a few weeks
later to see if the situation seems more under control.
Are the steps you're taking working. If so, great, If not,
figure out what else you need to change. Things can
be overwhelming for a while, but you don't want them
to be overwhelming permanently. In the meantime, this is Laura.

(04:34):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.
Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
Before Breakfast Pod that's B the number four then breakfast po.

(05:00):
You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Podcast at i heeart media dot com. That Before Breakfast
is spelled out with all the letters thanks so much.
Should I look forward to staying in touch? Before Breakfast
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

(05:21):
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.