What To Do When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

Feeling unfocused or overwhelmed? Here are a few things you can try

When you put your head down and start to work on your goals, you can get overwhelmed and unfocused at some point. It happens even to the most productive people.

One of my students recently said the following when we were talking about goals:

“My main goal this month is just one: Finding a new job…This goal has been shadowing me for the last four months with no results, not even interviews despite trying. Now I fear it because I have been failing so far…”

She explained that she previously applied productivity methods like daily journaling, Pomodoro, time-blocking, and so forth, to achieve her goal.

“[But] it seems I am overwhelmed with so many frameworks instead of really applying,” she concluded.

We can feel overwhelmed or unfocused when we face a lot of tasks. It applies to both large and small goals; changing careers, starting a new business, running errands, doing your taxes, and so forth.

You can get low on energy and give up on all your positive habits. It’s great to get some rest, but you also don’t want to make that your default state.

The goal of healthy and productive human beings is to be energized, enjoy life, and not be a burden to themselves and other people.

So how do you cope if you don’t feel that way? Here are a few tips.

Rebuild your good habits one by one

This is actually the answer that I gave our community member above: Take things one by one. We all want to get a lot of things done. And we want to get them done now.

But you’re more effective if you focus on one thing at a time. How do you practice that?

• Pick one technique that works best for you. This could be meditating, journaling daily, using Pomodoro, etc. The important thing is that it works for you — not for someone who wrote about it on Medium or LinkedIn.
• Apply that technique consistently until it becomes a natural part of your routine. I recommend doing it for at least a week.