The Real Reasons You’re Always Overwhelmed (and What to Do About Them)
By: Michael Metcalf
Tags: Exhaustion, Wellbeing, Burnout, WFH

The Real Reasons You’re Always Overwhelmed (and What to Do About Them)

photo by By Startup Stock Photos from Pexels

Brain fog, lethargy, and an inability to relax. Underlying anxiety that you have unfinished business somewhere. Being so overloaded with tasks you can’t manage to get a single one done.

This is the state of being overwhelmed, and during 2020 it’s been happening to more of us than usual.

Being overwhelmed occasionally is part of life. Things get hectic, but you power through them because you have the energy to persist, and you can see the finish line ahead. It’s different, though, when the situation doesn’t seem to go away. Without respite, you can’t recover, and each day feels like an exhausting sludge you can’t seem to escape from.

We’re simply not made to deal with daily avalanches of stress and attention-grabbing stories.

There is tons going on out there, but our brains are wired to focus on one thing at a time.

Imagine a production line in a factory that turns ingredients into cookies. If you double the number of ingredients going in, you won’t magically get bigger cookies. Things get backed up, machines jam, and the whole thing grinds to a halt. You end up with dough splattered over the place.

If you feel like the conveyor belts in your brain are jammed and overflowing, you’re not the only one. Here are four reasons why your feelings of overwhelm seem to outstay their welcome — with a few solutions for dealing with them.

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

Reason 1 — The Situation

First of all, everything out there. *gestures wildly out the window*

2020’s relentless avalanche of happenings has contributed to worldwide overwhelm, not just for the key workers on the frontline of the pandemic, but for pretty much everyone else to some extent.

The increased mental load from living our daily lives under the shadow of covid-19 simply puts more of a strain on the brain than usual. Every day you have to do regular everyday stuff — tie your shoelaces, choose the right coat for the weather, feed the cat — but also have to modify your behavior to fit in with new and ever-changing rules.

Even though they are minor inconveniences, things like putting on a face covering, washing your hands, and complying with social distancing guidelines can add an extra layer of effort to your day. And that effort builds up.

It’s not just compliance that takes its toll, either. There’s the frequent confrontation with issues of life and death, empathy towards those suffering, and a constantly shifting economic climate to think about. The uncertainty of the whole situation permeates your consciousness with real, physical effects on the brain, as David Rock notes in Psychology Today:

“A sense of uncertainty about the future generates a strong threat or ‘alert’ response in your limbic system. Your brain detects something is wrong, and your ability to focus on other issues diminishes. Your brain doesn’t like uncertainty — it’s like a type of pain, something to be avoided.

When you can’t predict the outcome of a situation, an alert goes to the brain to pay more attention. A threat response occurs. A 2005 study found that just a little ambiguity on its own lights up the amygdala. The more ambiguity, the more threat response, and the less reward response there was in the ventral striatum.”

Coping with this type of constant underlying threat means your brain is working overtime. Even though it only weighs around 2% of your total body weight, it consumes 20% of its energy. No wonder mental exhaustion feels so heavy right now — our brains are under a lot of strain.

How to deal with it

Well, there’s not a whole lot you can do about external events, so it might be your opportunity to practice the art of stoic acceptance, hunker down and just get through it. If things do get bad, though, don’t bottle it up — talk to a friend, family member, or medical professional.

Also, try to consider what sources of stress are unnecessary in your life and trim the fat. Say you’re spending an hour each day consuming doom-ridden news coverage — try swapping that for a quick news summary email that you can skim in just a few minutes each day, and spend the extra time doing something that fills up your emotional reserves.

Take heed of the fact there are plenty of indicators 2021 will bring a whole bunch of positive stories, including the ‘beginning of the end’ of these crazy pandemic times.

Photo by Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash

Reason 2 — Your work life has been turned upside down.

Even if you’re lucky enough to be still working during 2020, you’ve probably still faced at least a little disruption. And the more disruption we go through, the more our brains have to cope with day by day.

It’s not just the physical shift from office to home that’s become a burden on our psyches. It’s the way we talk to each other each day, too.

Remote work has made for a total shake-up of the way we interact with people, depriving us of the ability to read body language and subtle social cues. ‘Zoom fatigue’ is real, and it doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

Video calls are simply harder to deal with than real-life interactions: you have to maintain more focus than usual because the times you’d normally look away for a moment to collect your thoughts don’t quite seem appropriate. You can’t read the body language of your conversation partner so you have to watch them and listen to them intently to fully take in what they’re communicating.

It’s hard enough doing it on a high-resolution screen, but technical limitations make this even harder — fuzzy visuals, patchy connections and a lag between the things you say to each other and the time you hear each other. It all adds up to create that extra mental load, where the processes of our regular subconscious brain get pushed to our consciousness and limit our ability to focus on the content of the conversation.

“Our minds are together when our bodies feel we’re not. That dissonance, which causes people to have conflicting feelings, is exhausting. You cannot relax into the conversation naturally,” says Gianpetro Petriglieri, a professor of learning and development in the workplace. You’re also painfully aware of the natural silences that normally punctuate beats in the conversation, he explains: “Silence creates a natural rhythm in a real-life conversation. However, when it happens in a video call, you became anxious about the technology.”

Added into this strange mix of phenomena is the feeling of being watched. Having a camera pointed at your face feels different than a pair of eyes, especially when you can see your own reflection on the screen. It weighs down your conscious mind and acts as quite a distraction. Little wonder, then, that many of us can’t face back-to-back Zoom calls each day; we have to get up for a break as soon as the first one ends, just to recharge our mental batteries.

The idea of work-life balance has taken a hit, too. Now that our home and work lives are very much intertwined, with the daily commute consisting of a journey from the bedroom to the kitchen most days, relaxing properly is much harder to do these days. Remote workers have been found to be willing to work longer hours than normal to get things done, partly as a balance of being given the ‘freedom’ to work from home.

And then there are the distractions. From affectionate dogs to homeschooled kids to the neighborhood construction crew practicing their angle-grinding skills all the way through that important sales call, it’s never as peaceful as you want it to be. Unless you’re blessed with a child-free cabin in the woods to work from there’ll probably be something to throw you off your game and add to the list of things that steal your attention.

All this adds up to a pretty overwhelming situation. In fact, 40% of people have felt symptoms of burnout at work during the pandemic. And it’s affecting a wide range of people.

Software engineers aren’t having a great time, for example. Despite having a job you’d think would suit home working, in an industry that’s fairly sheltered from the economic fallout of covid-19, 82% of remote developers say they’re experiencing signs of burnout. Nobody is immune from overwhelm in such a volatile situation.

How to deal with it

Again, a little sprinkling of hard-nosed acceptance could go a long way, especially as things might take a turn for the better sooner rather than later. But there’s also the opportunity to make some changes, both big and small.

Investing in a few choice items to make homeworking easier — like a standing desk, or an array of indoor plants — could make a bigger impact than you might have realized. You won’t necessarily be able to rely on your employer to fix the situation. Almost 70% of professionals say their employers don’t do enough to prevent or lessen burnout, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be encouraged to do so. Looking for a new job is possible, too, if you’re willing to brave the new world of remote interviews.

Thinking creatively and building new routines are options for some. Not everyone has the privilege of flexibility, but if you can change up your working hours to try an afternoon siesta or earlier start than usual, you might discover a workday that leaves you feeling energized rather than drained.

Photo by Omer Rana on Unsplash

Reason 3 — The work you’re doing doesn’t align with your innate motivation

What really gets you out of bed in the morning?

Paying the bills is a good place to start, but that doesn’t take you too far. Without a more definite sense of purpose in your work, you’ll be going through the motions — and the motions are especially challenging to go through right now. Something needs to give you the edge. Something needs to energize you. And without work that energizes you, you’ll find yourself getting drained instead.

Barry Schwartz reports some shocking findings in his book Why We Work:

“According to a massive report published in 2013 by Gallup… there are twice as many ‘actively disengaged’ workers in the world as there are ‘engaged’ workers who like their jobs. Only 13% of workers feel engaged by their jobs.

The vast majority of us, some 63%, are not engaged. We are checked out, sleepwalking through our days, putting little energy into our work. And the rest of us are actively disengaged, actually hating our jobs.”

It doesn’t paint a rosy picture of work environments around the world. But Schwartz outlines a class of workers that don’t often succumb to such a negative outlook towards work: those that have a certain degree of autonomy, variety in their daily tasks, and a chance to use their ingenuity to solve problems as they arise and develop more effective ways to get things done.

What these workers benefit from partially involves finding that flow point; the kind of task that challenges you and holds your focus right up to the limit of your abilities. It’s work that’s almost too difficult, but not quite — completing it fills you with satisfaction and lets you enjoy harnessing the power of your own ability.

As well as the work itself, what fires people up is a sense of purpose in what they’re doing. It’s fine working for a company that’s only goal is to increase shareholder value, especially if generous compensation and stock options are on the table. But knowing that the world outside is positively affected by your work gives you that extra dose of energy to push through challenges. You’re not just working for the boss or the company: you’re working for society, the economy, or the environment.

In fact, having a sense of purpose is highly correlated with employee success and job satisfaction. Dealing with periods of overwhelm is much more doable when you care about what you’re doing.

How to deal with it

You won’t always be in a position to change your job at the click of a finger. Finding meaning in a role that doesn’t seem to have any can be difficult, but it is possible.

Firstly, think a little more about who actually benefits from your work. How are you helping society? If that’s not obvious, are there any particular stakeholders whose lives you’re improving?

Writing in HBR, John Coleman suggests that you don’t find your purpose — you build it:

“Almost any work can possess remarkable purpose. School bus drivers bear enormous responsibility — caring for and keeping safe dozens of children — and are an essential part of assuring our children receive the education they need and deserve. Cashiers can be a friendly, uplifting interaction in someone’s day — often desperately needed.

Sure, some jobs more naturally lend themselves to senses of meaning, but many require at least some deliberate effort to invest them with the purpose we seek.”

He also suggests there are multiple evolving examples of purpose in each responsibility we have, so looking for one big virtue isn’t always ideal.

“How do you find your purpose? That’s the wrong question to ask. We should be looking to endow everything we do with purpose, to allow for the multiple sources of meaning that will naturally develop in our lives, and to be comfortable with those changing over time.”

On a practical level, there are a few ways of seeking these flow-inducing, purpose-driven challenges.

You can take time to note down what truly energizes you that you’ve done in the past, and see if there’s a way to incorporate that into the projects you’re working on. Ask your colleagues and managers if there’s anything you can help with that ticks those boxes.

You could try to get more specific and use a people analytics tool to measure you and your teammates’ motivations. This can help you start a conversation about how to realign projects to best suit each person, which not only improves engagement and team morale, but creates better work and improves productivity.

Photo by Olivia Synan on Unsplash

Reason 4 — You’re probably highly detail-oriented

When there’s so much going on, the detail-oriented person will naturally find it difficult to switch off.

Whereas some folks are content with a high-level overview of situations, finding peace in summaries and big-picture perspectives, others aren’t happy letting the particulars go by unexamined.

Detail-oriented people ask questions about what’s going on, methodically working their way through each data point to gain as full an understanding as possible.

Think of Sherlock Holmes: he’s a perfectionist with a stunning eye for the little things. He leaves no stone unturned and sees clues at a crime scene that even the most careful observer might miss. But Sherlock probably wouldn’t be ideal in a strategic role (which is why his sidekick Watson is more of a big-picture thinker, providing a quicker, emotionally-driven overview of the capers they find themselves in).

This trait can be both a blessing and a curse. While detail-oriented folk can produce excellent works of analysis, they’re prone to perfectionism and difficulty moving forward before every avenue of investigation has been explored.

In a year like 2020, zooming in on the details of everything when it’s all happening is going to lead to some overwhelming moments because of the sheer amount of information processing you’re involved in.

How to deal with it

If this sounds like you, it’s probably a good opportunity to step back, take a deep breath and learn to let go of your perfectionist tendencies.

You could try some gentle experiments in ‘letting go’. Maybe for a day, you could purposely trust that report your employee has produced, and let them send it directly to the client rather than getting your red pen out for an obsessive editing session.

The phrase ‘done is better than perfect’ is worth reflecting on.

As Rebecca Zucker notes in HBR:

“Know when ‘good’ is ‘good enough’ by asking yourself, “What is the marginal benefit of spending more time on this task or project?” If the answer is very little, stop where you are and be done with it. Part of this is also recognizing that we cannot do everything perfectly.”

You might also ask yourself what the consequences really are if you let one or two things slide. Really go through the probable consequences of a mistake of failure. Would it really spell public humiliation and the end of your company? Or would it just mean the possibility of an extra half hour tweaking a document and teaching someone a better method of doing things?

Is there anything you can delegate?

For entrepreneurs in particular, they can have problems letting things go. But part of building a successful business involves letting go of the things that slow you down so that you can concentrate on doing what you’re really good at. Can you invest in an assistant to take some tasks off your plate?