Your overwhelm is your business

We're faced with daily situations of overwhelm, yet expected to keep up, work it out and carry on.

It happens when we learn something new, start a new role, join a new team or get new responsibilities.

Heck, it happens if we move to a new town, read the menu at a new cafe or have a conversation with someone new! These all have the potential to cause overwhelm.

Nature's metaphors of floods, mudslides, sand storms and sink holes overwhelm cars, buildings and villages in the same way that we get overwhelmed.

But what we're drowning in is information, data, details.

It doesn't feel good.

So do we wait until everyone is a better presenter, leader and communicator, who'll make it all better by delivering information in ways we easily digest? Oh yeah... we’ll be waiting awhile!

This is why our overwhelm - when it happens - is our business. It’s ours to get out of. We don’t have to do it alone, but we do need to take responsibility for it.

Next time you experience overwhelm, notice your response to it. Is your strategy to escape overwhelm or to conquer it? Sensemaking is a deliberate practice to use in the space of overwhelm.

Ask

- what's going on

- what's this about

- what do I need to do.

Working and overworking - How much work is enough?

'Burnout is an occupational phenomenon,' said the World Health Organisation this year.

Yet here we are working harder, longer and under more pressure, stress and expectations than ever. The sweat of prolonged activity; you feel it at the gym. And then the gym session finishes, it’s recovery time.

But when does work let up? How much more effort, hours and days will you put into this thing, this project, presentation, report or ... you know, the *thing*!? A deadline is a due date. It doesn’t mean 'work 24/7' until the due date. But we get drawn in, believing more work effort will lead to a better result.

It doesn’t.

Avgoustaki and Frankort's University of London Research showed the implications of work effort can lead to higher stress, less satisfaction and recognition, fewer opportunities, less security.

What? This 'work' actually seems to work in reverse? Want a productivity gain? You need a clock, a timer, a calendar to see that you’ve worked too long on this.

We are all overworking on something. Check what you've done so far; is it good enough? Get another opinion or two. 

There’s thinking and there’s overthinking

How much thinking is enough?

I'm reading a book by an author who’s a marketing ninja guru genius and they keep letting the reader know how much thinking they do. The author's stories are about the times when they were:

- thinking about possible scenarios

- thinking about the numbers

- thinking about solutions

- thinking about ideas

- thinking about the questions clients and colleagues might ask

- thinking about what other people might be thinking.

When we do this thinking, the problem is we are mostly OVER-THINKING. We are such wasteful thinkers.

We disguise thinking as:

Wondering

Imagining

Conjuring

Reasoning

Analysing

Rationalising

Reflecting

Contemplating

Deciding

Judging

Assessing

Evaluating … and

Mentally rehearsing.

We mentally rehearse scenarios trying to ‘prepare’ or ‘be ready’ for what lies ahead. We default to overthinking believing it's a useful way to solve a problem.

But calling an end to overthinking could be way better for us.

Move in to action sooner; to get real evidence and results - not imagined.

Q: What do you often overthink?