I have for you today, the story of the greatest work crunch ever told…

Before you think I’m talking about a game like Halo, I want to assure you that I’m referring to someone who works even harder on a single day than any game development crew you’ve ever thought of. That’s right – let’s chat about the crunch of good old Santa Claus.

Now you may think that you’re overwhelmed, given it’s the time of year of family pressure, lots of work deadlines probably looming in the back of your head, and you’re about to write the incorrect year down for the next 2-3 months… but you’ve got absolutely nothing on Santa. Our old, out of shape (c’mon cookie eating), jolly bearded pal has to visit nearly 132 million homes, cross 24 time zones, and (if being generous) travel at least 175 million land miles all in 31 hours.

Actual depiction of Santa IRL

In order to be successful of course, he needs to travel so fast as to stop at 1,178 homes per second. I know your Tesla has ludicrous speed and sports cars can go incredibly fast – but this man is something else in a convertible driven by reindeer!

Look, while we may not be as overwhelmed as Santa, we can definitely find ourselves in spots where we’re slammed, too. I can’t even imagine having Santa-levels of work, but I’ve definitely thought to myself “how did I even get here??” with my head in my hands. For all of you who have gone through that suckitude, or are finding yourselves there right now – let’s cover these three ways we can both get out of and prevent future overwhelm from ever happening to us again:

1. Write down everything you’re working on
2. Prioritize your existing work
3. Say “no”, and create a backlog for future work

Write down everything you’re working on
When we’re overwhelmed, it’s often difficult to have a complete and accurate view of all we have to be working on. If we’re operating out of our memory, this can not only be overwhelming mentally, but also often inaccurate.

The first step to combating this is to do what I call a “brain dump” – writing down everything you’re doing and need to be doing. This can be in any form -large projects, small tasks, you name it. The only truly important fact is that it’s written and in front of you in such a way that you can process it visually. From there, you’ll begin to be able to sort through it.

If you’re concerned this may be even more overwhelming, your fears aren’t without cause – but I’d suggest doing this anyway, as it significantly aids in the next step of this process. Even if you’re not currently overwhelmed, one of the ways I work to stay that way is to keep an accurate running log of active projects and tasks!

Prioritize your existing work
Once you have a visual on what you’re up to and what you need to be up to, you can begin to start processing what you need to do. If you’re stuck so bad that you can’t think straight, or you know you need to do two or three different things but you’re procrastinating or paralyzed – this step will clarify things for you.

However is best for you, begin to prioritize the work in front of you. It may be that you need to re-write your list, or just organize it. It may be that you want to sort it in priority order by deadline, or by how mentally overwhelming the work it. No matter how you sort it, prioritize so that you know what’s very important to execute on right now.

If you’re staring at something scary and you’re afraid or trying to procrastinate – break down that difficult thing into “Laughably Small Tasks” where the first task is so dead easy to do that you’ll do it because the amount of effort required is literally laughably small.

Once you’ve got things in front of you prioritized, you can take action on the final step…

Say “no”, and create a backlog for future work
Depending on what you’re looking at, saying “no” can be the hardest step. If you’ve got your work prioritized, but you have a deadline you need to hit tomorrow, it may seem impossible to tell someone no. You may also not want to say no to work. You may also just think it’s flat out impossible – I assure you, it’s not.

If you’ve got looming deadlines, you can always ask for a short extension – you never know what will happen for sure until you ask. If you’ve discovered that an extension is impossible, you have other levers to pull in the shape of asking for help from others, or even reducing the “perfection” of your work to a standard that’s acceptable but not immaculate.

In addition to curtailing existing work as much as possible (as, of course, the only other way out is “through” – getting all the work done ASAP), the other battle is simply saying “no” to new things. This may mean not accepting new work, but more often than not, this often just means saying “no” to the new, shiny, fun project that we want to do. For those of us who struggle at finishing (yeah, I see you over there chronic “starter-but-not-finisher”), this is the hardest thing in the world to do. We may claim it ADHD or a failure of discipline or whatever – but truth be told, new and shiny is just difficult to deny.

The easiest way to aid yourself in saying “no” is to keep that written list of work and backlog I already told you about. When you have a new opportunity, or you’re considering starting a new project, if you have your backlog to look at then you’ll be able to review how much time you actually have free and available. It may hurt, it may not be what you want to say, but when you see a mountain of stuff in front of you it becomes much clearer and easier to say “no” (or, more accurately “not yet”) to the new thing. Conversely, you can also put other projects on the backburner for new ones if that’s what your prioritization leads you to do!

“But Adam, you don’t understand… getting out of this overwork hole is harder than Santa smashing into Mount Everest during a freak snowstorm! There can’t be any way for me to get out of this!
I’m not going to deny, you may be correct – because if your metaphor is accruate, well, that’s pretty hard and painful. BUT, I think we tend to overestimate the binds that we’re in while we’re in the middle of them. When we stop, take a breath, and pause in order to brainstorm creative solutions… more often than not we discover options that we weren’t thinking of just five minutes before.

So, I encourage you to take that breath, go through the process above, and trust yourself a little bit! You’re more capable than you think you are when you’re in full-on panic mode!

Alright, what did we go over again?

1. Write down everything you’re working on
2. Prioritize your existing work
3. Say “no”, and create a backlog for future work

So while we may not need to fly so fast and far in a convertible sleigh that our head might come right off of our shoulders…
We can still get incredibly overwhelmed from time to time. But, if you take the three steps outlined above, you’ll make significant inroads at pushing your anxiety away extremely quickly!

And if you’re overwhelmed or anxious about finding work – I’m dilligently writing away at Quit Aspiring, Vol. 2 which will be published in 2023!