How Do I Cope When Everything Feels Urgent?
A reader asks: What to do when you have a lot to do?
This week I’m answering a reader question. If you have a topic you’d like me to write about or a question you’d like answered, I’ve started a page for just that! Click here and drop your Q in the comments.
(If you’d rather ask me privately, you can also simply hit reply.)
Please note: I am not answering these questions in my capacity as a formal coach. They are simply ideas and suggestions about my personal experiences to help empower independent thinking :)
Q: If in life you have a lot to do - run a family, tasks like fix a fence that broke in the recent storms, among all the other million things... How does one cope with a lot on the brain? Everything seems urgent in my head. Thanks, J.
A: I hear you on this one J! In fact, I would go as far as to say that everyone reading this has at some point in their life felt this way. Plus, I also have a fence to fix! So I’m skin in the game with you here…
The thing with life is that it has a tendency to make us feel like everything is important. It’s not our fault - we are a product of our environment, and the do-it-all attitude of modern living encourages us to prioritise everything in order to “win” in every area of life. We’re supposed to have incredible and fulfilling careers, happy and nourishing relationships, healthy, strong and flexible bodies, fun and well-cared-for friendships, unique hobbies, stylish wardrobes, well-kept homes, a keen interest in politics/books/films/tv/music and so on…
It is, quite frankly, fucking exhausting.
The reality is that not everything can, or should, be a priority. When we’re struggling to prioritise, and feel like we have a brain that is overcrowded with “urgent” tasks, it’s almost always because we’re trying to prioritise too much in our lives.
I have so much to say on this subject - much more than I can fit into this thousand word newsletter! But the one crucial point I’d like to share is that the more you can focus on what’s truly important to you – family, health etc – the more you will gain back control over your brain and that sense of urgency.
I think we have two choices when we feel like we have too much on our minds:
We can minimise the amount of stuff - i.e. change our lives
We can minimise the amount of stress - i.e. change our thoughts
For most of us, the first option isn’t particularly workable. If the mental load of life involves our children, house, work et al. we’re probably not going to suddenly change everything - give away our possessions, move to a home that’s easy to maintain, cancel all our children’s extra curricular activities and so on.
So, the best option available to us is to investigate, challenge and change the thoughts we have about a given situation. I find personally that the most helpful thing I can do when I feel overwhelmed is get some perspective.
I’ll ask myself: Out of everything that’s happening in my life right now, what will I still care about this time next year? What is essential to my happiness, and what is superfluous?
(FYI: I used the word ‘happiness’ lightly here - I don’t mean always feeling happy, that’s impossible. I mean the combination of a sense of purpose and joy, for which there is no word that I know of!)
If I remind myself what’s actually important, it begins to lessen the load of all the other stuff. And the more that I tell myself that it doesn’t matter so much if I don’t fix that fence right now or that I feed my children pasta pesto for the hundredth time this week, the more those things seem alright. I get better at Saying No and I lower my own standards - see, Mediocrity.
But, having said all that, there will always be life admin. At some point that fence needs fixing, and for that I use something called an Important-Urgent Matrix. I have it as a permanent post-it on my wall next to my desk and refer to it whenever I need to prioritise my To-do list.
Here’s a picture:
Draw this out on a piece of a4 paper and then jot down your various commitments/tasks in the different corners. For example: fixing the fence (for me) falls in Important but Not Urgent (lower right hand corner), writing this newsletter falls in Important & Urgent (top right hand corner), buying my kids’ shampoo falls in Urgent but Not Important (top left hand corner). And if something falls into Not Important and Not Urgent then I either delegate it to someone else or take it off my To-do list altogether! (You may notice from the picture that cleaning my keyboard falls safely into this category.)
Of course we do the Urgent & Important stuff first. This newsletter needs to go out today (because it’s important to me that I stick to a regular publishing schedule), so I’m writing it before I do anything else. I haven’t answered any emails - which to the people who sent them feel very urgent and important. And I’m trying hard not to think about that fence, which incidentally I have a direct view of right now.
But then, and this part is really crucial if you want to actually shift stuff off your To-do list - both to get things done that you want to get done (I’d really like to have my fence fixed and the garden looking nice again!) but also help with those feelings of overwhelm… Block out some time in your week/weekend, an hour, maybe two, to tackle as much as possible from your Important & Not Urgent and Urgent & Not Important squares. Group those tasks together and throw yourself at them. Whatever doesn’t get done that week is added to the next, or maybe finds it way off the grid altogether, relegated to the Not Important & Not Urgent space.
Modern life is hard, and busy! But one of the keys to robust mental health is accepting that sometimes everything will feel like too much. Sometimes it will feel as if you are not on top of any of your priorities and that life is a fucking mess.
But, the more we tell ourselves everything is too much, the more that becomes our reality. I’m strongly against extreme positive thinking, I think it’s toxic AF, but I do believe in questioning the helpfulness of our thoughts. I know that personally, the more I tell myself I’m feeling overwhelmed, the more overwhelmed I feel. If instead I say to myself - Wow, life is a lot right now, what can I do to support myself with this? - I fair a lot better.
So be kind and supportive, rather than critical, to your brain. It’ll give it more space to figure out what you need next to navigate these busy and challenging times.
Finally, for the past 5 years I’ve had a reminder on my phone that pops up everyday at 11am. It says:
You have time to do everything that’s important to you.
Which is why, right now, instead of fixing the fence or replying to emails, I’m going for a coffee with my best friend. Because that’s what’s important to me.
What do you do when your brain feels too busy? I’d love to hear!