Feeling Overwhelmed at Work? Start With One Simple List
When everything seems to be coming at you at once, your instinct might be to just think harder. But the people who actually handle pressure well do something much simpler: they stop, grab a piece of paper, and write it all down just to get a clear view of what's actually happening.
Recently, someone close to my family lost her dad. She was grieving while also facing all the practical decisions that follow a sad loss. Without a partner to share the burden, everything seemed to be landing on her at once.
Everyone wanted to help. Despite their best intentions, help often turned up as another opinion, another suggestion or another thing she “should” consider.
Things were quickly approaching overload. That feeling of being overwhelmed by the tsunami that you can see coming towards you but feel powerless to stop.
Feeling overwhelmed isn’t just reserved for big life moments. You can feel the same way at work, even on a regular Tuesday morning.
When overwhelm hits, everything looks urgent
An old boss of mine had a favourite saying that has stayed with me over the years.
It was borrowed from a line popularised by Ronald Reagan to snap me back into reality whenever a project I was working on started heading into chaos: 'It's hard, when you're up to your neck in alligators, to remember you came here to drain the swamp.'”
It was a reminder to step back and return to basics. Something that is easily forgotten when you are fighting off problems with sharp teeth.
The problem with overwhelm is that it makes everything feel urgent and necessary and nothing very obvious.
A customer needs an answer. Your manager wants an update. Finance is chasing the forecast. A colleague has sent a “quick question” that will take an hour to resolve. Meanwhile, the work you planned to do is still waiting.
The longer you remain in this reactive state, the harder it becomes to see a way out.
Feeling overwhelmed is a warning, not a failure
Feeling overwhelmed doesn't necessarily mean that you're incapable of doing your job. It may mean you are trying to hold more information, commitments and competing demands in your head than one person can reasonably process.
As humans, we all have a limited capacity for processing information, retaining items in memory and making decisions. Excessive workload can contribute to slower performance, lapses and mistakes.
This matters because workplace overwhelm isn't always a personal productivity problem. It may be excessive demands, inadequate resources or unclear priorities.
A list will not fix a lack of resources or make an impossible deadline achievable. What it can do is show you what is actually happening and help you decide what to do next.
The simplest survival skill you already know
The first step is to create a single list.
Don’t write your lists on multiple Post-it notes or random pieces of paper that don’t relate to one another and can get lost. This is crucial. One list. One place. Bringing together everything competing for your attention.
David Allen, creator of the Getting Things Done methodology, reinforces this by saying, "Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them."
The principle is straightforward. Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them. When you try to keep everything in your head, your brain spends most of its energy just trying not to forget things, leaving very little capacity for actually dealing with them.
However, simply recording a task is not necessarily enough. Our brains are wired by a phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik Effect, which keeps unfinished tasks on a constant loop in our subconscious.
Thankfully, science shows you don’t have to get the task done today to find peace; you just need a roadmap. Making a specific plan for completing it satisfies the brain, closing the loop and helping to alleviate the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Turn your list into a SAFE plan
This is where the Work Survival SAFE Method helps you slow down and make a specific plan before pressure turns into an impulsive decision.
Situation: get everything out of your head
Start by capturing into a single list or system everything that is competing for your attention. The moment you have parallel lists, you're splitting your attention and creating gaps.
Include:
Tasks you must complete
Promises you have made
Requests awaiting a response
Decisions you need from other people
Problems you are worried about
Half-formed ideas you do not want to forget
Don't filter or prioritise while capturing. Just empty your head onto the page.
Alternatives: decide what happens next
Once everything is visible, examine each item. Decide whether to:
Do it
Defer it
Delegate it
Drop it
For anything that remains, identify the next practical action.
“Prepare customer presentation” is a project, not an action.
“Ask Finance for the latest revenue figures” is an action.
Make sure you write them as action-orientated tasks and not vaguely defined tasks, which can create more anxiety because it is not clear how to begin. A specific next action gives you somewhere to start.
Now consider your genuine priorities:
What must happen today?
What can wait until later?
What depends on somebody else?
What adds little value and could be removed?
What cannot be completed with the time and resources available?
Your goal is to decide what is realistically possible.
Firm Words: communicate your capacity
If your list contains more work than you can reasonably complete, don't silently accept it and hope for the best. Use the list to have a calm, specific conversation with your manager.
For example: "Here's what’s on my plate right now. I can easily get A and B done this week, but adding C means something will likely slip. Which one of these should I prioritise first?"
Or: "That new request will take me about two days to wrap up. If I dive into that right now, we'll need to push back the deadline for the monthly report. Let me know if you're okay with that trade-off!"
These are firm words, but they aren't aggressive words. You're not refusing to help. You're making the consequences of the decision visible and asking the appropriate person to confirm the priority.
That is far safer than saying yes to everything and being blamed when something inevitably fails.
Evidence: record what was agreed
Your list can also become evidence of your workload and the decisions made about it.
Record:
The agreed priorities
Who owns each action
Important deadlines
Work that has been deferred
Decisions or information you are waiting for
Any changes agreed with your manager
Where appropriate, follow up an important conversation in writing: “Just to confirm our discussion, I will prioritise the customer proposal this week. The monthly report will therefore move to next Tuesday.”
This is about preventing misunderstandings and maintaining a reliable record when circumstances change.
Keep the list alive
This shouldn't be a one-off activity. Review your list regularly. Cross off completed work, add new commitments and revise priorities when the situation changes.
You may use a notebook, a task-management application or another system that suits you. The tool you choose is a personal preference. What matters is having one trusted place you will actually maintain.
Your list should help you answer three questions:
What have I committed to?
What is the next action?
What am I not going to do yet?
If it can't answer those questions, it's probably just a collection of worries.
A list creates space for a better decision
For our family friend, writing everything down didn't remove the grief or make every problem disappear. What it did do was make a tough situation feel less chaotic. Once the tasks and decisions were visible, they no longer seemed overwhelming.
The same principle applies at work.
Sometimes the simplest things have a profound impact. Not because they solve every problem, but because they give you a clear view of what the problems actually are, and that alone changes everything.
When you're overwhelmed, an impulsive decision feels like the only option. "I can't take this anymore" is a feeling, not a plan. Before you hand in your notice or send an email that can't be recalled, reach for a notebook.
Use the SAFE Method:
Capture the Situation
Examine your Alternatives
Prepare your Firm Words
Preserve the Evidence
Once everything is visible, your next move may look very different.
If you want to go deeper into this subject, I recommend:
Getting Things Done by David Allen - About the GTD methodology
The Zeigarnik Effect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzdDbBxLXHk and https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/zeigarnik-effect
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