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091: Five ways to deal with overwhelm
3.7k Plays9 months ago
In this episode, Mia and Dinah discuss the common experience of overwhelm and share practical tips and strategies for managing it effectively. They explore the contributors to overwhelm, such as perfectionism, decision fatigue, multitasking, and comparisonitis. They emphasise the importance of mindset shifts, time management, setting boundaries, self-care, mindfulness, and organising and decluttering as key strategies for dealing with overwhelm.
Resources
- The Art of Adulting program
- Book: Reasons not to worry:How to be Stoic in chaotic times, Brigid Delaney
- Watch: The Minimalists: Netflix
For the full show notes, head to Life Admin Life Hacks.
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Transcript
Introduction: Life Admin Life Hacks
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips, and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money, and improve your household harmony.
Hosts' Personal Experiences with Overwhelm
00:00:12
Speaker
Hi, I'm Dinah Ray Roberts, an operations manager, and it was my constant state of overwhelm that led me to starting this podcast. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer. You know me as when my chest starts tightening and I'm holding my breath, it's time to reset and change my self-talk.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks.
Understanding Overwhelm: Causes and Symptoms
00:00:35
Speaker
When you've got so much going on that you're struggling to cope with it all or going through a stressful situation, we describe this as being overwhelmed. In this episode, we talk about the contributors to overwhelm, including perfectionism, decision fatigue, and multitasking, our tips for managing overwhelm so you can feel calm and in control, and how being on top of your life admin can reduce the risk of overwhelm. If you want to stop your life being derailed by overwhelm, listen on.
The Art of Adulting Program Introduction
00:01:03
Speaker
So the doors to the art of adulting are now open and this episode is brought to you by our signature membership. So this program features monthly masterclasses to guide you through optimising your digital tools as well as decluttering, organising digital photos, reducing your mental load, money management and time management.
00:01:24
Speaker
You'll also have monthly mindset sessions to help you deal with challenges like procrastination, motivation and personal boundaries, plus weekly co-working sessions where you can do your hour of power alongside other members of the community. This monthly program is value packed to help you get real results. Doors are open for one week only, so sign up now and make 2024 your most organized year yet.
00:01:48
Speaker
Okay. So Diana, when we talk to people about life admin and say, you know, what's the biggest challenge? What's going on for you? What is the word that we hear more often than any other word? Yep. Overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed by it all. I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. So we wanted to do a deep dive this episode to understand what overwhelm actually is. We probably all know what it feels like, what's actually going on in our bodies, what's contributing to this feeling of overwhelm, and then how can you deal with it? Because
00:02:18
Speaker
No, it's that beautiful John Kabat-Zinn quote about, I'm going to butcher it now. The word about the waves and learning to surf. You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
00:02:30
Speaker
OK, so there's always going to be swatting flies. There's always going to be flies, but you need to be able to coast through this stuff as much as possible or at least get a handle on it and not feel like you've just chronically overwhelmed and in coping mode the whole time. That is not how we want to live our lives. So.
00:02:48
Speaker
You know, overwhelm is that state where you are mentally or emotionally stressed. It can get quite intense where you're flooded by the thoughts and emotions and these physical sensations that are really quite hard to manage.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, in the intro, you talked about that feeling in your chest of overwhelm. And certainly for me, the way that it manifests is just rage. Like I get angry much easier with everyone. I find it really hard to cope with those day to day stresses that usually I can manage to deal with without too many problems.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah. There's that real feeling of being raw, like you're on edge. Everything is sort of sensitive to any other little minor stresses that normally wouldn't derail you, but just, you know, you've had enough and it's a common symptom of anxiety, you know, it's, it's can come about because of
Triggers and Manifestations of Overwhelm
00:03:40
Speaker
life. Generally, if you've got life events going on, you could have a high workload, personal relationships, you know, what's happening in family life. There's any conflict or financial problems.
00:03:51
Speaker
or major life changes or you know you are anxious or you have depression.
00:03:57
Speaker
These are all things that can trigger overwhelm. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it can, as I talked about before, it can often be then that all of the other things become very difficult to do, like cooking a meal or organizing event or shopping or checking your email, like those things, which may be on a regular day when you're not feeling overwhelmed or just no problem at all. If you're feeling overwhelmed, those things can just
00:04:22
Speaker
be very stressful, disproportionately stressful to the task at hand, I think. And often you might even find it hard to get started on these things because you just kind of find it hard to think clearly enough to actually get started on tasks. That's
Impact of Chronic Overwhelm on Health
00:04:37
Speaker
right. We all have these moments where it was like a peak moment in a week or a month where you get this way. But if you're feeling chronically overwhelmed and stressed, it can really take a toll on your mental health and your physical health.
00:04:48
Speaker
And as I said before, you know, we're aiming for thriving and flourishing, not just coping. So if you are finding that, you know, you are feeling that tightness in the chest, you're feeling that fatigue, you have that sense of helplessness, you know, you can feel your heart pounding in your chest or beating so hard.
00:05:05
Speaker
other, you know, physical symptoms of overwhelm is just having a headache or an upset tummy all the time. Or just these ongoing feelings of like hopelessness, like this is never going to get better. It's always going to be glaotic. I can't cope. Yeah. You know, things are going to be that sort of pessimism can set in. Yeah. And like, it feels like things are just impossible that it could never ever be achieved. Definitely those are the kind of feelings I've had before. Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
And sometimes it ends up, you know, you can kind of try, you get paralyzed, basically, you can't, you start avoiding things and you can't get much done when you're feeling so depleted and kind of like, yeah, it's a mountain, a mountain of stuff to walk through. Like it's a cruel thing of our psychology, isn't it? That like often when you've got so much to do, that then we have these psychological responses of overwhelm, which make it hard to get started. Like it's kind of ironic, isn't it? But that's often what happens. Yeah.
00:05:59
Speaker
So, you know, we'd encourage you to reflect on your own experiences of overwhelm and recognizing, OK, what does it feel like for me when I get overwhelmed? What are the first signs? Because there is that early warning. I feel like there is an early warning system. And for me, it is the chest. And I realize, well, when did I last take a breath? You know, my thoughts start getting a little bit irrational and I'm like starting to circle the cycle down a little drain. And that's all right. I need to just step back and look at what's happening and get my head around.
00:06:29
Speaker
the reality of the situation, or we can talk about some of the ways to deal with it, but I think we've all been there. We want to point out early on that if this is something, if this is a state that you find yourself in a lot, like all of the time, like chronically, then reach out to a mental health professional, go and see a psychologist or a therapist or a counselor to get some tips on this, because it is something that can lead to, or is part of anxiety, and it can be very hard to live with,
00:06:56
Speaker
It's not a great feeling. They can have a bigger toll on your physical health. So please do go and get some further help. We are not mental health professionals. This will get you so far.
Perfectionism and High Standards
00:07:07
Speaker
So like, let's now chat a little bit more about what contributes to that sense of overwhelm. So I think the first one is perfectionism. Definitely something that I have struggled with over time in terms of like the pursuit of these unattainable standards. And I think particularly for
00:07:25
Speaker
Working mums, it can be a big challenge in trying to juggle that perfection.
00:07:30
Speaker
idea of being the perfect mother and the perfect colleague. And that can definitely contribute to feelings of overwhelm. Yeah. There's that, you know, fear of failure. You have to do it just perfectly. Otherwise, you know, what's the point or it's not going to be good enough and I'm going to be rejected. I heard this great Elizabeth Gilbert quote the other day. Perfectionism is fear dressed up in high heels. Like it's kind of, you know, it's actually quite a sort of base emotion. It's driving perfectionism a lot of the time.
00:07:59
Speaker
but it kind of sounds fancy because you're doing such an awesome job and, you know, the output or the quality is high. But, you know, if you do have really high standards for yourself in that way, it is easy to be overwhelmed because it's, you're going to go the extra mile. You're going to keep pushing. You're going to, you know, over deliver possibly. This is like where the 80-20 rule comes in. And I feel like I actually had a, I remember doing like a performance review with a manager earlier on, because I, you know, there were moments where it's like,
00:08:28
Speaker
You're over-delivering. You need to recalibrate. Your 80% is other people's 110%. So just take it down a level. It's fine. Your work is fine. And that's sometimes how you have to think if you realize that you have those perfectionistic tendencies.
00:08:46
Speaker
It's like, you know what, my 80% is probably other people's 110% and I can just take it down a level. With the mindset shift here around also, you know, moving from perfection to progress. Progress is what we're aiming for, not perfection. Perfection is impossible. Yeah. And I think that that's kind of, it's like the same with the idea of, you know, having this, the to-do list that's complete.
00:09:10
Speaker
like the reality is you can have that moment it's like in box zero you can have it for like a minute usually and the next email hits you and kind of just accepting
00:09:19
Speaker
that that is, it's going to keep going and you kind of need to live with that imperfection and incompleteness and yeah, progress is what we're aiming for. Done that is better than perfect. Definitely. And that's definitely something that I have embraced over the last, you know, probably five years as we've worked through this podcast is, you know, that idea has really helped me change my mindset, particularly around a lot of things with life admin, because in most cases,
00:09:47
Speaker
Making some progress on it is better than doing nothing and I think often when you feel overwhelmed by the task, you just do nothing and that's usually a far worse solution. Yeah. Catching yourself in that all or nothing thinking, thinking I need to do it perfectly or why do it at all, you get to catch yourself in those moments is really insightful to realize what you're doing to yourself.
00:10:08
Speaker
There's so many books around getting out of that perfectionistic mindset. So I will put them in the show notes. I really encourage people to work on that because it contributes to so much stress in so many areas of life.
Decision Fatigue and Cognitive Overload
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. So another area that I think definitely contributes to that feeling of overwhelm is decision fatigue and cognitive overload in terms of the amount of information that you're getting and certainly in today's world when we're bombarded with information all the time.
00:10:35
Speaker
It really means that your brain just gets so exhausted from from trying to scan all this information, trying to make sense of it. And in particular, when you're trying to make decisions based on it. Yeah, it's really exhausting trying to make choices all day long. A brain, you know, there's only so much you can deal with. And you sort of again scrutinize the information sources that you are consuming and how frequently
00:11:01
Speaker
If your habits are that, you know, you get up in the morning, you check your phone, you're scanning your emails, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then you're listening to the news, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then you're talking to your family, you'll get in the car or on your commute or whatever you're doing next and absorbing all this information. Not to mention, you know, the decisions that you have to make around the house about, you know, if you're the person that's making all the decisions around what everyone's wearing, what's for dinner, what's happening later that weekend, organizing school holidays,
00:11:30
Speaker
making a whole bunch of decisions at work, that can truly get overwhelming. It's a lot. So cognitive overload is real. It is different from the mental load in terms of the anticipating and the planning that goes on. Cognitive overload is really just dealing with information and trying to make decisions. And I think it definitely happens when you try and do comparison shopping. So I think that that is an area where that cognitive overload and decision fatigue comes in and you try and
00:11:57
Speaker
absorb all the information when you're trying a comparison shop and then you actually, you're making lots of micro decisions and then you actually then can't close the deal so to speak and do the work. So I guess that's where our tips around just comparing three offers, really focusing on the features that are important to you and actually getting it done make a huge difference to stop that overwhelm. Yeah. So, you know, there's some other beautiful techniques for streamlining decision-making and simplifying the choices you make in daily life.
00:12:28
Speaker
So we probably all heard stories about, you know, people who wear uniforms to work essentially in terms of their own personal uniform. And like Barack Obama wearing the same suit. No, no, Steve Jobs, like people who just wear the same thing every day. I feel like there's a story there. But I can tell you, like when I was in corporate life and going to an office,
00:12:50
Speaker
I had a range of uni-clo v-neck jumpers and pants and I would just swap them in and out. I totally had a uniform for what I wore to work. I had the same thing for breakfast every day. I pretty much had the same thing for lunch every day. I'm just taking out some of that decision making through routines and also putting things in a schedule.
00:13:13
Speaker
So that you've just, you've decided once you've baked it into your day or baked it into your week and you don't have to make little decisions all the time. Yeah. I think like meal planning is another one where.
00:13:24
Speaker
If you've planned meals in one lot of decisions, then you don't have to keep deciding every day. It makes a huge difference to that feeling of 5 p.m. freak out when you don't know what you're going to have for dinner. Yeah. And there's also the benefits of prioritization to reduce that cognitive overload where you just decide what's important and what you are going to focus on and let everything go or know that you can park that for another day, another moment.
00:13:48
Speaker
So you're not trying to think about everything and deal with everything at once. With that to-do list, you really need to be flicking the items up and down in terms of priority.
00:13:58
Speaker
getting the ones that don't really matter out of your line of sight. Yeah. And I think that's where like, if you're really clear on what's your values and what's important to you at your season of life and actually deliberately saying, I'm not going to look at this area or focus on this, cause it's not important to me right now and letting go of it, that reduces your sort of cognitive load of things that you're thinking about. Yeah. Okay.
Multitasking vs. Focused Tasking
00:14:20
Speaker
Multitasking. I feel like people have talked about how crappy multitasking is for a long time now.
00:14:26
Speaker
Is anyone still trying to do it? Because the jury is out, it cannot be done. So multitasking is that idea that, you know, you're trying to do more multiple things at once. And I feel like for a while there, there was this sort of focus, yes, multitask, it's a way to be more productive. And there was all this stuff about women being better than men and multitasking. It turns out no one is good at multitasking. It is not good for you. There's this idea that if you're trying to look, you know, switch between different tasks
00:14:56
Speaker
there is this penalty of context switching where it actually takes you like 20 minutes to really get back and get in a state of flow to focus on doing one thing really well. I know I watched a YouTube video with my son the other night because he claims that he can do his homework while listening to a podcast or watching or having a YouTube video. And so I was trying to show him a video of this thing which says it's actually not multitasking, it's task switching.
00:15:24
Speaker
and that you're switching from one task to the next. Needless to say, I cannot convince a 14-year-old of the wisdom of task switching, but anyway, I can only try.
00:15:35
Speaker
the same conversation with my daughter. You had a laptop on her computer. I'm just gonna do my homework in front of while I'm watching TV. I'm like, you can either do your homework or watch TV. You're basically going to take a 20 minute homework activity and stretch it out over an hour and a half because you're trying to do both and you can't. And then, you know, literally three hours later, we're still watching TV and she hasn't finished and it's like, yeah, that's
00:16:01
Speaker
This is an experiment that has failed Honeyburn. This is where really being clear about the role of phones in multitasking and notifications is really important. Obviously it works when you're getting pinged and being able to
00:16:16
Speaker
use do not disturb functions. But even at home, if you're trying to actually do a meaty life admin task or even like do your meal plan for the week, you need to like put your phone away from you or put it on do not disturb so you don't get distracted by any notifications or messages or WhatsApps or emails coming in. Reducing those kind of interruptions that are not deliberate in your day can really make a huge difference in terms of your stress levels and also your productivity when you're actually doing those tasks.
00:16:47
Speaker
One of the times I do multitask is when I am doing something kind of a little bit mindless in front of the telly. But the key word there is mindless. So I might have my laptop on my phone with me and I'm watching television and I'm not really paying attention to what I'm watching. So it's a low investment TV show. Send me watching.
00:17:07
Speaker
And I'm like going through my emails and just deleting stuff or I'm, you know, last night I sat trying to find a cat sitter. So I'm just scrolling through profiles while I'm half listening to a television show. And I guess it was very intentional because I knew that the activity I was doing was pretty mean, you know, menial and mindless. And I wasn't really needing to concentrate on the television show. So I think if you can approach those kinds of situations intentionally,
00:17:35
Speaker
not thinking, oh, this is going to be the most effective productive way for me to buy a cat sitter. I wouldn't have done it like that if I hadn't, you know, if it was urgent or if I really wanted to get it done quickly. One task at a time is the way to go.
00:17:49
Speaker
You know, and be mindful about it, get into that sense of flow, get into that flow state where you do get super productive and you can be incredibly effective because you're fully concentrating. I love when that happens. I like a little playlist that I put on to usher me into that state. Yeah. When you get it, it feels amazing and you achieve so much. It's the best. Okay.
FOMO and Social Comparison
00:18:12
Speaker
Another thing that contributes to feelings of overwhelm is FOMO and comparisonitis. Still struggle with FOMO. You know that. I hate missing out on anything. I always want to be there. And so it is, it's my risk is that I over-schedule myself because of my FOMO tendencies.
00:18:32
Speaker
Yes. Or slash confusion of how much you pack into a weekend. I'm done by social event. Number two, that is it. But yeah, it's a real, it's real. You know, you want to be where the action is. You want to be having the fun, seeing the people doing the things, but it can get to be too much physically and emotionally and mentally.
00:18:58
Speaker
And all of that comparison, I just part of it, you know, when you're comparing yourself to others, that can lead to feelings of inadequacy and trigger these feelings of overwhelm because you're like, Oh, how do I do that? How do I be that? How do I have that? And you can go into a spiral of, of looking at that gap, a perceived gap. It's always a perceived gap. You never really know what's going on. Well, what do you do? What do you, how do you talk yourself out of the FOMO feeling done?
00:19:26
Speaker
I think that like having a really good handle on my calendar really helps me realize that I can't pack everything in if you know what I mean. So I do think that's like the experience of just being older and knowing like what the implication will be is if I do five things on a weekend that actually then I'll feel wrecked for the whole next week, like it's too much and that I won't have managed a meal plan and etc, etc.
00:19:50
Speaker
I think some of it is making sure that you've got some of those mundane tasks in your calendar because then you realize you are actually over scheduling yourself. And if you find yourself getting to the end of the weekend and you haven't found time to do the grocery shopping or found time to do the laundry or whatever it is that you need to make your family run smoothly, then adding those things to your calendar can stop you from
00:20:11
Speaker
packing too much in. And I think another one is like regularly scheduling in like an afternoon of nothing, like putting that in my calendar. So often when I am looking ahead, I will start to deliberately schedule in some weekends where there's nothing on a Sunday or things like that.
00:20:28
Speaker
So you focus sort of more on the consequences of what happens to me if I do pack too much in and I get exhausted. What about the actual feeling of the missing out part? Did you spend much time like talking yourself off that ledge? So I've been reading this book about stoic philosophy. It's really good. It's by Bridget Delaney. He wrote WellMania, which has popped up on Netflix as a television show. The stoics, the ancient Greek stoics were concerned about FOMO as well. Really?
00:20:56
Speaker
And this is a perpetual part of the human condition. And they were talking about just having gratitude for what is, for what you do have, rather than focusing on what you don't have. And how there are benefits to not going to the party, whether you couldn't go because you didn't get invited, or you couldn't go because you're too exhausted, or you had competing parties, or whatever it is. There's always reasons why.
00:21:21
Speaker
really focusing on, okay, what do I have? How will I use that time that's going to be beneficial so I can move away from an uncomfortable feeling of I feel left out or I feel overlooked or nobody likes me, what's happening? And really shifting on the reality of there's plenty of stuff going on, other things to do. I can use this time in a positive way.
00:21:45
Speaker
I think that is an important part of the thinking that needs to go on when you're trying to deal with FOMO. There's the benefits. It's the thinking about the opportunity cost. If you did go to the thing, there's an opportunity cost as well as not going to the thing and focusing on the benefits of that.
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the other things that I now do, which I would never have done before, because I used to have such a fear of disappointing people, is if something else comes up and, you know, maybe it's like something for my kids that I really want to be at and so have massive FOMO, more likely to actually cancel a plan I'd previously made and I feel more comfortable because I think I've done a bit more work on thinking about what my values are, what's important to me. And if something comes up that's more important to me,
00:22:27
Speaker
I'm more comfortable to say, actually, I can't do both. So I'm going to actually decline on something I previously committed to, you know, politely and appropriately. But, you know, I never used to feel comfortable doing that. You're growing, darling. You're growing so much. Comparisonitis, I feel like social media has set that on fire. It's like a dubs to fire. Yeah. Mental health challenge is there. You know, comparing yourself to other people's lives, other people's goings on.
00:22:55
Speaker
It's that always that curated view that you're seeing. And sometimes even if you remind yourself of that, it's hard to just think, oh, they've got it going on. How am I doing in comparison? And that's where it becomes really important to set your own personal goals and compare yourself to where you used to be, not comparing yourself to someone else. You're often comparing sort of your day three to their day 409.
00:23:20
Speaker
of whatever it is you're looking at. You never know how much effort and time people put into whatever it is you're comparing.
00:23:27
Speaker
between the two of you and you never really get the full picture. It's a dangerous trap to fall into. Okay, next one. Definitely a huge one for a lot of people in terms of overwhelm is procrastination and avoidance. And the more you procrastinate, the more your overwhelm builds into this like spiral of procrastination, overwhelm, avoidance, spiral. Yeah.
00:23:51
Speaker
The more you delay tasks. Yeah. We all know those tasks. They're the tasks that trigger those uncomfortable feelings, which might be boredom, tedium. You might be thinking, this is too hard. I don't want to do this. It's going to take too long. We've all had these conversations in our head and you put it off and you put it off. And it just, I used to call them blockers. Sometimes they would work for weeks or months or years. You just avoid them and they just hover like little spectres.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen a few things on social media recently, like little, you know, quote kind of things that says, I just finished a task that's been on my to do list for three years and it took 10 minutes to do. Often it's the case, I mean, not always, because sometimes they're big, chunky tasks, but often you procrastinate and then there's that
00:24:36
Speaker
You know, that feeling of overwhelm that gets created because it's one more thing and it's been hanging around for such a long time. Yeah. But it's easier said than done to actually overcome procrastination and actually do the thing. Yeah. And that's because it's all down to emotional regulation. Yeah. That is at the root of procrastination, just actually having a handle on your emotions.
00:25:00
Speaker
and riding through the discomfort. I often think of myself climbing onto a horse and galloping down a beach and like going through a force field. It's like, I can make it to the other side. I'm just going to sit down. And literally, as you said, you can think about it for way longer than it takes to do the thing. You're just going to break through that barrier, that 10 minute, 15 minute barrier of sitting down and starting and then you put
00:25:27
Speaker
You usually do get into the hang of it and you're like, all right, it can see the finish line. So now when you're procrastinating everybody, I want you to think of being on a horse going down the beach. We can do this.
00:25:39
Speaker
We can do this.
Procrastination and Task Management
00:25:40
Speaker
And I actually read something that says even if you do one minute, you're more likely. So you can kind of say, actually, I'm going to put the timer on and I'm going to do one minute. And if I'm really not feeling it after a minute, then I'll stop a step away. But actually, usually you'll just keep going, particularly for those smaller tasks that you can procrastinate on ever. Yeah. Well, that is the number one tip is breaking them down into smaller, more manageable steps.
00:26:05
Speaker
You know, James Clear with his atomic everything. The baby is step. What does he talk about? Like if you want to start flossing, like he just start flossing one tooth. One tooth here. And that is key to procrastination. So if you've been procrastinating about getting your tax done for the year.
00:26:21
Speaker
You can just think, all right, I'm just going to open up my Google drive and create one folder that says deductions. And that's it for today. That's all I'm doing. And just like sneak up on it, approach it from little baby steps, dancing towards the main tango. Oh God, my metaphor is all over the place. The other things that can help with procrastination is setting realistic deadlines. Sometimes people are very deadline driven. If they actually give themselves a deadline,
00:26:50
Speaker
and they'll meet it and that's helpful if you also have some accountability. So we've been running our co-working sessions, our Hour of Power weekly workroom. Those co-working sessions we are bringing into the Art of Adulting program because it's blown everyone's minds how just having this thing in the calendar where, you know, other people are going to show up and you're all going to sit down and do your life admin together has like shifted the dial for them in terms of productivity.
00:27:17
Speaker
and doing the things that they've been procrastinating about for so long. So having that accountability can be really important to avoid. Avoid the avoidance.
Control, Stress, and Growth Mindset
00:27:26
Speaker
And I think another area that I, this is another hot spot for me in terms of overwhelm is when you have this perceived lack of control. So where you feel like you can't control the situation or you don't know how to tackle it,
00:27:43
Speaker
definitely creates this huge feeling of overwhelm. Yeah, that feeling where you just don't have this agency, like things that are just happening to you, that's again another awful feeling. And there are certain, I guess, life events that are often like that, things just come out of the blue when you have to deal with it.
00:28:01
Speaker
With most life admin, most life admin is scarily predictable because it's boringly predictable what's going to come your way. But life events pop up and they can throw spanners in the works. Definitely illness. Like I think that's when there's an illness, like someone you're caring for, those sorts of things.
00:28:19
Speaker
that feeling of lack of control of that situation and also not knowing what's going to happen next definitely can contribute. There is that folly that really, we aren't actually in control. I think there's so many articles written about this when the pandemic hit. We all feel like we have control over things, but we don't.
00:28:40
Speaker
And it's, so it's this strange dissonance. It's the word like it's like we kind of, this is how we go through life thinking we are in control, but we're not. And again, oh, I'm going to raise stoic philosophy again, because I'm loving this book. The Stoics talk about all we can control is your actions, your reactions, and how you treat people and how you think about things.
00:29:03
Speaker
That is it. Other people's behaviours, other people's choices, everything else that happens in the world, completely out of our control. So I feel like sometimes when we feel like we don't have control over our life, it is the fact that these events are popping up that we thought we did have control over, but it's like reality check, you never did have control over that. But also we feel like our thoughts are out of control and our own emotions and our own behaviours are out of control.
00:29:32
Speaker
And that is also not a great feeling because you feel like you're being triggered and you're just sort of reacting to things and you haven't had the chance just to sort of respond as a mother, you know, great challenge of the human condition of that, that there's milliseconds between the thing happening that's freaking you out and you deciding not to lose your shit or not. The milliseconds there where you're like,
00:29:58
Speaker
catching yourself and going, okay, take a breath, just think about this before I explode. I must admit, just even talking about the fact that nothing's in my control makes me feel kind of distressed. But I think that that's where, like, you know, I guess you really need to focus on the things that you can control, like what is within your domain. And, you know, that's where if you have your life admin under control and your systems and everything in place, when those things do
00:30:24
Speaker
come at you unexpectedly, you can deal with them because you've got the energy, because all of the other things in your life aren't causing the overwhelm. That's right. That's it. I think having that environment set up in a certain way that provides as much ease as possible and having tools and strategies that you can employ when crazy stuff does happen and you do feel like things are jumping up, it's like, okay, I have a strategy for how I'm going to
00:30:49
Speaker
deal with this. It might not be automatic, but you've got tools in your toolkit that are going to help you cope with this. Let's switch focus now and talk about all the various different ways you can manage overwhelm because we're surfing on those waves that are just going to keep on coming. Well, definitely the first one is really, and I think we've already talked about this a bit, but really the mindset shifts. So really having that sort of resilience mindset or growth mindset and a belief that you can
00:31:19
Speaker
Develop these abilities. You can develop these competencies and that you can actually learn to handle these things better. Yeah. And sometimes that's about challenging the stories that you've been carrying around, like the ones that go like, I will never be X. I could never do X. I grew up in a house where this happened and so I don't know how to X and I will never know how to X. You know, growth mindset means that we learn things. We can change.
00:31:48
Speaker
was opposed to a fixed mindset where you're like, this is the way it's been and this is the way it's always going to be. So, you know, I feel like there are lots of areas where
00:31:57
Speaker
I've thought, I don't know if I could be that kind of person and do that again. And it's a big, there's a lot of self-talk, it's a lot of change, it's a lot of experimenting. And that's also a lot of turning around and looking at yourself and thinking, oh, two years ago or five years ago, I wouldn't have thought that I could do that, but I'm now on the other side. And look, we did it, we did it, cultivating that growth mindset and recognizing when you have
00:32:24
Speaker
you know, those challenges that you've come through and how you have grown can be really good evidence for giving you the confidence to try new things and realize, okay, I can learn, I can change, I can grow in certain ways. Yeah, and I think changing the thinking about when you do have setbacks to thinking about those as like learning experiences, like what you've learned from it rather than it being a complete disaster is definitely part of that change in approach to mindset.
00:32:52
Speaker
And I feel like we do this a lot with our kids who, you know, they might be afraid of doing something or feel overwhelmed by something new that's new to them. And often as parents, we point out to the fact that, well, you know, you can do hard things. This happened and you remember you did this and it was fine. And often we have to turn that same strategy and advice on ourselves. It's like,
00:33:11
Speaker
You can do hard things. This happened to you and you got through the other side and you'll be able to get through the other side of this as well. Yeah. Another area of helping deal with overwhelm, which again, we've talked about a bit already, but it's obviously we're huge fans of is time management, particularly around time blocking.
Time Management and Boundaries
00:33:30
Speaker
So really scheduling time in your calendar to work on those important tasks and really prioritizing the things that are important to you.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, there's a healthy dose of realism that needs to happen with how long tasks are going to take or, you know, when, when is it reasonable to expect this to be done? And, you know, when we're going on, starting a life admin journey, by the time we researched and put everything in place, it was like a good year to 18 months before things actually felt humming. So if you're thinking now, look, I am overwhelmed, things do feel
00:34:02
Speaker
chaotic. I don't really have systems set up. Give yourself a good leeway of time to move into this new way of being organized and start with some time management strategies around blocking out time to do certain things and prioritizing what you're going to work on. I've got a whole other podcast episodes on time management, the one with Kristy Flora, particularly around managing your energy and attention as much as time.
00:34:30
Speaker
time in curly quotes, really good skills to adopt. Another one I really think is the importance of setting boundaries in both your personal and professional life. And I think it's just like actually a word that I think is becoming like a more commonly used term. I've read a great book on boundaries recently. I can't remember who wrote it. I have to put it in the show notes. You know, spending some time thinking about what your boundaries are and then communicating those effectively. So
00:34:58
Speaker
that you can tell people, you know, this is, you know, this is too much for me. This is where my boundaries set in terms of what I, you know, am willing to do and, you know, won't do, can hugely help when it comes to overwhelm. Because if you understand what your boundaries are, if you spend some time thinking about it, makes it way easier to communicate that to others where, you know, they might be giving unrealistic expectations about what you can achieve.
00:35:21
Speaker
And for those of you listening thinking, what is a personal boundary exactly? It's essentially like a line, a metaphorical line you don't want people to cross.
00:35:31
Speaker
And so you can apply that line in lots of different dimensions. It might be like physical boundaries in terms of how close people physically get to you, whether they can touch you or not, whether they can touch your hair. I can't tell you how much as a kid people would just start touching my hair. And I'll look at them like, why are you just touching me with no concerns? That's in my boundary. But it can also be emotional boundaries and other sort of personal boundaries about the kind of
00:35:57
Speaker
behavior that you will or will not put up with and the things you will or will not do, the things you will and will not condone. So examples of personal boundaries where you feel like boundaries have been crossed might be
00:36:09
Speaker
when people are asking you to do things where you're like, hell no, I am not doing that. And you can feel it often you have like a visceral response. It's like, oh no, that's just wrong town. Doesn't necessarily sort of make a bit of intellectual decision. That is your boundary. Sometimes you're aware of them, sometimes you're not, but it's important to reinforce them and actually communicate them to people with certain things because they are asking you to do things that you don't want to do. You just explain your boundaries to them.
00:36:39
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And I think if you haven't ever spent some time thinking about them, it can be hugely valuable to do that work, to think about what my boundaries are and in particular, how to communicate them effectively to others.
Self-Care and Mindfulness Practices
00:36:53
Speaker
Okay, another area is definitely self-care. So self-care is really important to managing overwhelm and preventing things from spiraling either further into burnout or anxiety. For me, that self-care that I would do when I'm feeling overwhelmed is definitely going for a walk. It's definitely trying to get outside into nature. That really helps me. But for others, it might be journaling, it might be hobbies, it might be, you know,
00:37:20
Speaker
even seeing friends, whatever self-care can really help contribute to that reduction of overwhelm. Yeah. We spend, we do a whole session on self-care in the course because it is so important to promote wellbeing and that's going to be impacting your physical health and your mental health. And yeah, it looks like it looks different for everybody. The key thing to think about with self-care is that it's not about being selfish. You know, you can look after yourself without it being at the expense of others. It's really about filling your cup.
00:37:49
Speaker
filling your cup regularly so that you can be there for yourself and you can be there for others. I think self-care for women is often sort of seen as indulgent. It's about bubble baths and pedicures where it's a lot more basic and fundamental than that. It's somewhat more essential to that, you know, supporting and serving others. And we can't do that effectively if we are depleted.
00:38:12
Speaker
And we need to be promoters of our own health. So whatever it looks like for you, make sure it's baked into your week, that it's not just a quarterly thing where you go and disappear for half a day and have a massage. Find the little things in your day and your week that are filling your cup and giving you a moment to reset and recharge. And sometimes I also think with self-care, there's this kind of feeling that self-care always looks like.
00:38:38
Speaker
retracting, like disappearing, like making yourself less available, which is kind of, you know, quite a constricting approach. Sometimes it can be the opposite. Sometimes you need to actually expand. You actually don't need to get out into the world, get out of your own little bubble at home and go and go and do some fun things out in the world and go and connect with people. And you'll know what's right for you, whether you do need to retreat and kind of hide away from the world a bit or what is going to recharge you is getting out into the world and
00:39:08
Speaker
and connecting with other people. What do you do to self-care? What did you describe? You like to go for a walk? So for me, definitely when I'm feeling that even if I'm having a really overwhelming day at work, I will actually even just try and leave my desk and go for a walk outside. I might just go for a walk around the block. It's kind of just this feeling of like calm that comes from that kind of
00:39:29
Speaker
getting outside, breathing some fresh air and taking, you know, moving your body. You know, it's kind of an uncomfortable thing to say that generally lying on the couch and watching Netflix isn't actually not very good self-care. You know, it might be occasionally, but for most people it doesn't make you feel better. It generally doesn't energize you and it certainly doesn't usually be overwhelmed other than maybe distract you very briefly from the problems. Yeah.
00:39:54
Speaker
That's a good point because distraction is, it can be a form of self-care, but it's often not the most nourishing. Sometimes even doing like, something like meal prepping is self-care for me because I'm setting things up for future me and I know I'm going to be really helpful in a minute of overwhelm. That counts as self-care, but I kind of, I guess with co-parenting and being by myself for a whole week and then having the kids for a week.
00:40:20
Speaker
often my self-care is going out into the world and going and connecting with other people because I have lots of time by myself. I don't need to hide away. So kind of related to self-care, and it probably is a part of self-care, is looking at mindfulness and stress reduction. So mindfulness and meditation practices where you're doing controlled breathing and breath work and either guided meditation or mindfulness when you're tuning into the moment,
00:40:50
Speaker
noticing what's actually around you and thankfully present into the moment. The research is clear that these really help bring down your stress levels as well. So if you haven't got a mindfulness practice or a meditation practice or you're flirted with it and decided, I can't meditate, at least think about how you can do breathing exercises.
00:41:11
Speaker
because things like box breathing, where you're holding your breath and breathing for certain seconds, they just bring down that fight, flight, freeze response, reset your whole nervous system, and will make you feel better. So yeah, that's another aspect of self-care.
00:41:28
Speaker
And I think a final one, definitely one that's close to Mia's heart is organizing and decluttering. So definitely the feeling around, you know, if you've got an organized environment, that clutter-free environment can for many people really reduce the sense of overwhelm. Definitely does for Mia and probably me too, but Mia's the queen of decluttering.
00:41:50
Speaker
Well, it's that outer order inner calm. If I walk into chaotic spaces, or not chaotic, but just cluttered spaces, I feel claustrophobic and I can't think. It's really an immediate visceral reaction for me. So yes, I like decluttering. I like the sense of purging. I like the sense of giving things away so that it'll be useful.
00:42:12
Speaker
But I also just like looking around my house and feeling like I know where everything is. Everything that's here I like. And there's room for things, you know? The kitchen bench is clear. It's actually an efficient workspace. I don't have to fight my way through stuff to do things. So, yeah.
00:42:29
Speaker
If you're feeling like that heaviness in your home, some of that can be contributed by the fact that you do have so much stuff. I just watched on Netflix that, you know, the minimalists are so inspiring. If you need a little inspiration about embracing decluttering and how freeing, how physically freeing and mentally freeing it can do.
00:42:50
Speaker
and say I'm poor to watch some of those shows. I literally get up from watching them and go, what can I chuck out? What can I get rid of? Get twitchy. Well, I think that wraps us up for today. So I hope that the hacks we've shared today will help you manage a bit better the next time you're feeling overwhelmed. Yeah. If this is something that you struggle with, please do join us in this intake of the art of adulting.
00:43:13
Speaker
We can give you the results that are going to tackle this methodically between our master classes and our mindset sessions and co-working will get you onto the other side so that you're feeling confident and can say goodbye to overwhelm. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeandminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan,
00:43:36
Speaker
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