How to Stop Being Constantly Overwhelmed

for the past five or six months I have

spent the majority of my time feeling

somewhat overwhelmed pretty much every

single day I wake up and I feel like

there's just too much to do too much on

my plate and not enough time to get it

all done and this is a situation that I

really can only blame myself for for

about the past six years I've been a

self-employed entrepreneur which means

there's no boss breathing down my neck

there's nobody specifically telling me

that I have to get things done because

they want me to do them it's really just

me taking on more than I can handle

and I'm still kind of in this situation

but for the past few weeks I've been

taking some steps to rectify it to

actually fix the situation and bring

back some balance into my life so really

what this video is going to be is me

sharing the plan that I've outlined for

myself because I know that I'm not the

only person dealing with this I got a

lot of emails a lot of tweets a lot of

DMS on Instagram from people who feel

overwhelmed in their own lives as well

so like I said before a few weeks ago I

sat down I opened Evernote document I

started creating a plan for bringing

back some balance into my life and the

first step to that plan was doing

something that I'm going to call a reset

sprint now somewhat coincidentally my

friend Matt Diavel just released a video

on his channel a few days ago about

burnout and in that video he talked

about the reason for why so many people

end up burning out and the reason is

that they keep sprinting when you're an

ambitious person when you're an

entrepreneur trying to build a business

or your student trying to get ahead you

have a lot on your plate or you're just

a professional who has a lot of things

going on you often take on sprints where

you make sacrifices you don't get to the

gym as often as you should or you're

making really quick not so healthy meals

you're not sleeping as much as you

should and you have to make those

sacrifices to get ahead sometimes

extraordinary action is what is required

for extraordinary results

but the problem is once you get those

extraordinary results there are still

more opportunities in fact once you

become successful there are more and

more and more opportunities and it's

very tempting to take those on and the

situation that a lot of people find

themselves in is they keep taking these

opportunities and the Sprint's never end

which leads to burnout and eventually

leads to this feeling of being

overwhelmed so the key to not burning

out is to make sure you're not always

sprinting do sprints sometimes but then

eventually back off from that and

actually bring some balance back into

your life so this is one thing that I'm

definitely trying to do but I did

realize that if I wanted to really bring

balance back into my life there was one

last sprint that I needed to do right

now and it was a reset sprint I needed

to put some time into reorganizing my

life

because over the past several months

I've had so many different projects

going on that a lot of my organizational

systems kind of decayed a lot of that

entropy that I like to talk about seeped

into them so the first part of my plan

has been reorganizing things doing a

little bit of a sprint to reorganize

meant to do system to reorganize my

Evernote because I just moved to a new

house it's also a good time to evaluate

what I own see what I need to reorganize

physically or get rid of or donate or

just otherwise give away so step number

one if you are constantly overwhelmed

then carve out some time to do one of

these reset sprints evaluate all of your

systems your file organization system

your physical living space in your work

space your task manager all these things

and take some time to get them back into

a state where they reflect reality and

they are actually useful to you all

right so after the reset Sprint has done

step two of the plan is to re-establish

your routine this was really big for me

because I was so overwhelmed because I

constantly felt like I had to get things

done I had so much on my plate I kind of

let my routine fall by the wayside I

would wake up each and every morning and

think I have to get to work immediately

otherwise I'm gonna run out of hours in

the day and the ironic part is this

attitude of thinking I need to work all

the time actually made me less effective

I know I wasn't using every single one

of my hours as effectively as I possibly

could so letting my routine go to the

wayside was really it didn't gain me

anything at all so I have made a

commitment to myself to rebuild my

morning routines for build my daily

routines and I know that even if I have

a lot to do that one to two hour window

in the morning when I should be doing my

habits is kind of off limits now one

thing I want to bring up about doing

this is that if you're going to

re-establish a morning routine that used

to be quite complicated if you had a lot

of habits that you were juggling and

they all sort of fell by the wayside

because you got overwhelmed it's

probably not a good idea to try to pick

up all of them at the same time

and there's a concept from one of my

favorite books the motivation hacker by

Nick winter called success spirals and

the Alpha talks about how when you're

building new habits you have to start

small and eventually you prove to

yourself that you can remain consistent

on a small number of habits or something

that's kind of a small commitment and

over time you add more and more

difficulty maybe take on more habits or

you add more difficulty to habits that

are already in your routine and you kind

of spiral up but crucially if for some

reason you fall off the horse you're

probably not going to be able to climb

back on it at the exact same level you

were you have to go back to the

beginning of the spiral and start easy

again now some people may be able to

climb right back up and do exactly what

they were doing before and that's great

but if you try it and it doesn't work

then go back to basics establish a

really simple morning routine or really

simple set of habits prove to yourself

that you can do those going forward and

then slowly work your way up from there

so in my case that meant number one

getting on a habit tracker once more and

I'm personally using an app called

strides for this but number two

establishing a morning routine that was

really simple at first it was just

waking up early drinking a glass of

water taking care of my plants and doing

some push-ups that was it

I wasn't reading I wasn't writing I

wasn't doing instrument practice these

are things that I want to bring back

into my routine but I knew when I was

starting if I wanted to remain

consistent it had to be simple of course

now that I've been doing those things

for a few weeks and I've actually proved

to myself that I can do them

consistently I've started to add some

more things into the routine so now

making up and I'm also reading for 25

minutes I'm making sure to write for 10

minutes and I'm also practicing piano

every single day so in summary step 2

re-establish your routines and I think

that even if you're spending time on

your routines remember that when you

have these routines you're a little bit

more grounded there's more structure in

your life and I think you're gonna be

able to be more efficient with your

normal working hours when you have that

structure that brings us to my third

step of the plan which I think for me is

actually the hardest one and it's to

define your priorities and learn to say

no more often so one of the things that

I really struggle with is that as my

business has become more successful as

the audience has grown the opportunities

have increased as well and every time

there's an opportunity there's this

little voice in my brain saying you

should go for that like there's no

reason not to go for that you

leaving money on the table you'd be not

helping as many people as you could if

you let that opportunity on the table

but I also realized that one of my big

priorities in life is the process of

discovery learning new things of being

able to pick up new skills for example

like I said I'm practicing piano every

single day this is something that's

pretty recent in my life and even though

I'm basically a complete noob at it it

is a lot of fun and I've noticed that

every single time I sit down to the

piano and practice there's a

breakthrough like just the other day I

figured out how to play a 3 2 polyrhythm

on the piano and if you're somebody

who's been playing the piano for quite a

while and that probably seems pretty

trivial to you but for me it was

something that my brain just could not

do for like the first hour while I tried

to do it and when I finally figured it

out when I finally realized that one

hand was doing one - one - and the other

hand was doing 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 at the

same time it was amazing that feeling of

discovery is something that I crave and

one of the problems is that with all the

opportunities that come up in my

business there's like this voice in the

back of my head that's kind of telling

me any time you spend on things you're

not already good at on things you're not

already established at like playing the

piano is wasted time because you could

be using that time to make another video

you could be using that time to improve

your website to train your employees all

this kind of stuff why would you be

using it on something that you're not

established in your business is a force

multiplier and you're not using it plus

there's zillion other people out there

who are already way better at piano than

you'll ever be why would you do that and

this voice is toxic and I realize that

if I continually listen to it if I

continually put all my time into my

business just because I feel that the

force multiplier is there just because I

feel like there's more opportunity there

I'm going to burn out I'm going to feel

overwhelmed because the desire for

discovery is not going to go away it's

just gonna be kind of stifled but it's

still gonna be there and it's still

gonna cause me stress so step 3 of the

plan is to say no to more opportunities

in my business even if they are

lucrative even if it seems like I would

be a fool to leave them on the table I

have to learn to say no because I need

to have priorities and one of those

priorities is the joy of discovery so

I've actually printed out a list of my

current priorities and I put it on the

all right there and it says practice

piano get back to a weekly schedule in

the YouTube channel make sure I'm doing

the things that are actually important

to me and say no to anything that is

going to block those so hopefully this

is helpful in some way to you and just

to summarize really quick here step one

do a reset sprint get your systems back

in order beef a physical or digital take

some time to really do this correctly

step two re-establish your habits and

routines don't give in to the temptation

to let those things fall to the wayside

because you feel like you don't have

enough hours to do your work have work

hours and have hours for your routines

and then finally step three define your

priorities going forward and then learn

to say no more often it's really

difficult but it's worth it and if I

might make a suggestion one of those

priorities should be as my shirt says to

never stop learning to maintain that

constant joy of discovery this is

something that's really important to me

and I'm really trying to make more of a

priority in my life so if you aren't

doing this already then try to learn

something new every single day or at

least every week if you're like me maybe

start playing the piano or pick up a new

book or possibly start watching a

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thanks goes out to curiosity stream for

sponsoring this episode and being a big

supporter of my channel and as always

thank you guys so much

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frankly thanks once again for watching

guys and I will see you in the next

video