Work Overload Solutions That Actually Work For Our Good

When we end up with a Monday that is totally packed, we often start the week feeling exhausted. To feel overloaded puts us on the defensive. We throw our hands in the air. We shout, “enough.” In this scenario, it is easy to make bad decisions, since we wind up catastrophising, worrying about worst case scenarios like missing deadlines and losing our jobs. Stress plagues us when our brain’s deliberate system gets swamped with demands. As a result, we loose our aptitude to think clearly, and tumble into a defensive mode that makes it difficult for us to be our most sensible selves. Here, work overload solutions that help us to rediscover a sense of control, without hurling our phones at the wall, features.

Work Overload Solutions That Start Us Rediscovering A Sense Of Control, Unfurls.

1. Don’t Base Your Time Estimate To Complete A Task On One Standout Memory

When we root our time estimate to complete a task on one standout memory, our best experience, instead of the average time it has taken us to do similar tasks in the past, we put ourselves under pressure and feel overloaded. To rely on one single example, not the average time it has taken us to do similar tasks in the past, prompts us setting excessively optimistic expectations. This tendency makes it easy for us to be unbalanced by a looming deadline or an unanticipated problem. To balance this excessive optimism, picture a situation where things don’t go entirely your way. Then, plan for it. You will feel great if you finish the task sooner.

2. Take A Mindful Break 

This requires you noticing when the tide of stress is rising. Your muscles tensing, the pit of your stomach contorting to feelings reminding you that you are not thinking straight, lips venting snappish comments, all point to a rising tide of stress. This condition arises from making too many demands on yourself. If so, pause and take a deep breath. Close upon, ask yourself, “do I want to feel overloaded?” Asking yourself this simple question reminds you that you have a choice to decide how to react. As well, it starts you re-engaging rational thought. To shed more light upon, taking a mindful break helps us to carve a path to work overload solutions.

Furthermore, this mindfulness promotes sharper thinking and better resilience. Again, it gives our overloaded mind a clear point of focus to unpack and reorganise everything.

3. Conserve Your Mental Energy By Writing Down On Paper Your Worries And Work-In-Progress Thoughts

Thinking about incomplete tasks and trying to keep track of them in our minds, often feature as a distraction that makes it difficult for us to concentrate. Putting a construction on, every time you tell yourself, “I must remember to pick up the grocery later,” you burn up a little of your mental energy. In agreement with, psychologists E. J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister, discovered that people do less well at solving puzzles and logic problems if their minds are occupied by another uncompleted activity.¹

To remedy this situation, it holds constructive for us to outsource some of our basic memory tasks to a recording device other than our mind. This step frees up mental space for real thinking. In this regard, keep a notepad or voice recorder where thoughts often come to your mind. Doing this enables you to cultivate the habit of immediately getting worries and work-in-progres thoughts out of your mind, and down on paper. As a result, your mind no longer has to expend energy, to remember them. When we are not wasting mental energy, trying to keep everything straight in our minds, our work feels easier. At a later time, we can deal with the written items.

4. Find out What You Will Be Most Glad Or Relieved To Have Done By The End Of The Day

When you are in the middle of so many tasks to do, ask yourself, “what is really the single most important thing for me to do today?” This simple question brings clarity and keeps us from overwhelming feelings that make it difficult for us to see the obvious. Also, it reduces the noise in our heads and the load on our brain’s working memory. Coming off, we begin to see clearly again. Putting a thought on, to find the one task that remains top priority among many, because our long-term success depends on its accomplishment, helps us to delegate, defer, or drop other tasks. In consequence, we keep our course to work overload solutions.

5. Consider The Smallest First Step You Can Take To Move Things Forward

Asking yourself this simple question is in order here. “what is the smallest first step I can take to move things forward?” This simple question steers you away from worrying about the scale of the challenge before you, to something to do easily. As your brain anticipates the reward that comes from success, you start moving out of defensive mode, to a receptive state of mind. Again, the question reduces the load on your brain. It accomplishes this by redirecting effort from something difficult, like conceiving an unknown future, to something easier, like thinking about an immediate action to take. Finding and engaging with the smallest first step of a daunting task, and taking it step by step, helps us to keep moving things forward when things feel unmanageable.

6. Isolate And Delegate Tasks That Don’t Really Need Your Talent

Although everything in life often feels important, we cannot do everything. Talking openly with your colleagues helps you to let go of tasks you enjoy doing well, but that others can take on. Following from, you create more space to do tasks that only you can do, that hadn’t been getting done. As you prioritise in this way, you minimise stress and make progress.

7. Deliver A “Positive No”

To manage your work load and extricate yourself from low priority commitments, deliver a “positive no.” The mechanism of this “positive no” starts by you beginning with something positive, not negative, when you want to decline a request. First, acknowledge and show appreciation for the other person’s request. Close upon, highlight what stands as your current positive priority, without interjecting, “I’m sorry.” Disclose why it is important, interesting, or meaningful to you. Make your point to resonate with the other person, as much as possible. Explain regretfully the implication that this means that you can’t do the thing they’ve asked you to do. Finally, end with warmth, a suggestion, or offer that does not sabotage your real priorities, like an introduction to other people who could help. Plus, wish them success in their project. This approach secures to you the understanding and support of the other person.

What is more, it makes everyone, including yourself, feel better about the choices you are making. Contrary to, when we decline a request, and start with, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to make it to the meeting,” we put the other person on the defensive. In this defensive mode, people have less mental capacity to be generous or expansive in their thinking, than when they are at their best. When people are defensive, you are unlikely to get their sympathy and understanding of your priorities.

8. Set Boundaries To Keep Things From Getting Out Of Control

Instead of blaming others, set boundaries, to take back control of your work load. Such boundaries feature here, not staying past six, eating lunch between twelve and one, switching off from work when you are at home. Boundaries make us calmer and more effective. Again, it shows that we have the capacity to manage ourselves. Saddling on, a clear communication of boundaries is powerful, since clarity is calming to others, even if the message isn’t exactly what people would like to hear. On the other hand, others view ambiguity and uncertainty as a threat.

9. Set Up Simple Rules That Require No Thinking, To Automate A Few Of Your Less Weighty Everyday Decisions

This move frees mental space for thoughts that matter more, since decision making drains our mental energy, whether the stakes are big or small. Illustrating upon, instead of agonising over whether to exercise or study french, do a few minutes of each every day. Akin to, instead of wondering whether to answer calls from unidentified numbers, and distracting yourself from work, set an automatic rule not to answer the phone if you don’t recognise the number.

Conclusion

Work overload solutions that actually work, revolves around ideas that help us to free our mental energy and focus it on tasks that matter.

Notes

1. Masicampo, E.J., & Baumeister, R.F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683.