Here’s What You Should Do When You’re Overloaded With Work

You’ve been busy all your life. Every day, you show up to work in haste with a big to-do list in your hand. You want to write that business proposal, make those phone calls, engage with your employees, and attend that business conference in Paris. So, you begin to feel tired, exhausted even. In fact, you begin to lose interest in your career—because you’re always overloaded with too much work.

How do you resolve that? How do you love your work back again? What should you do to make your life better when you’re overloaded with work? This article will walk you through three practical tips. Let’s jump right in. 

1. Pause and reflect

We all get overwhelmed with work at some point. So, when you’re stressed with work, you don’t instantly try to change your career, switch to another trade, or quit your job entirely. Try to do the following instead: Take a deep breath. Quit working for an hour. It’s time for some reflection. Analyze your workday, assess your workload and examine your to-do list.

As you go through all these, you don’t have to do anything, just reflect on your workloads and the nature and process of your work. Why? So you know where the problem lies and you can see how you can ease things. It’s important to understand what’s going wrong in the way you plan your tasks; what makes your workday bloated? And as you reflect, it’s time to take action: Simplify your tasks.

2. Start simplifying

It’s all about changing the way you work. You’re overloaded because you’re piling more work on yourself, which won’t make you productive. It will only deplete your energy and willpower. So, you must change the way you work. You must simplify. And to simplify is to do less. Do 1-3 tasks a day instead of 10.

It’s not about how many tasks you have on your plate, it’s about how many projects you can execute in a day. In fact, you need to create a not-to-do list, where you’ll itemize the things that you’ll not do in a day.

That will help you become more focused on doing and completing your day’s tasks, which will move you closer to achieving your goals. In addition to creating a not-to-do list, you should also go through your calendar and reminders and cancel some of your commitments. You need to take things off your plate so you stay laser-focused doing the things that matter.

3. Cancel commitments

We inflate our lives with too much commitment by accepting anything that comes our way. We fill up our day with lots of meetings, speaking engagements, business conferences, etc. We commit to too many activities, bloating our schedules with too much work.

The result? Work overload and burnout. But here’s the solution to that: Cancel commitments. Cancel all those meetings and seminars that are less essential. To do that, you need to be bold; you need to sharpen your leadership skill and become more confident.

No matter how lucrative a deal may seem, no matter how influential a person is, if their offer will overwhelm you or affect your long-term goal, you’ve got to say no to them. Remember, you want to simplify your life, not complicate it with too much commitment.

In the end, it’s about what you’ve accomplished. It’s about the joyful feeling that fills your heart with excitement when you have accomplished those important tasks, not the guilt of not getting too much work done.