You start every day already behind. There’s work, and the things at home, and the person who needs you, and the form you still haven’t filled in. You finish one thing and two more have arrived. Even on a day off, the list is running in the back of your head.
If that sounds familiar, the problem may not be that you’re bad at coping. There may simply be more on your plate than fits.
What’s going on
When there’s too much to do, the stress is a reaction to something real. You could list what’s causing it: a job, a person, a bill, a deadline. This is different from stress that keeps going without a clear cause. Here the load itself is the problem, so changing the load is usually part of the answer.
That can be hard to see from the inside, for a few reasons.
Everything feels urgent at once. When you’re overloaded, it can be hard to step back and see which things actually matter most. Stress can make it harder to concentrate and make decisions (NHS, “Stress”), and deciding what to drop is exactly that kind of decision.
Unfinished things keep pulling at you. In a set of laboratory studies, goals people hadn’t finished kept coming back into their minds while they were trying to do something else. When people made a specific plan for the unfinished goal, the intrusions mostly stopped (Masicampo and Baumeister, 2011). These were short experiments, so treat it as a promising idea rather than a proven one.
It can feel like a personal failing. If you think you should be able to manage, you might try to work harder or get more organised, when the honest answer is that there’s too much. Planning and organising your time can help. A review of 158 studies found that people who manage their time well tend to report better wellbeing and less distress. Most of those studies looked at people at one point in time, so they show links rather than causes. The authors also warn that it isn’t a cure-all, and that being “good” at managing time often depends on money, education and other advantages (Aeon and colleagues, 2021). A better system can’t make a load fit that doesn’t.
If it’s been like this for a long time, too much at once can also wear you down until rest stops working. There’s more about that in our post on the different kinds of stress.
Get it out of your head first
Write down everything that’s on your plate. All of it, big and small, work and home, in any order. It might be a long list. That’s fine, because it was already in your head and now you can see it.
Then look at it once and mark the things that have a real deadline or a real consequence. The rest is still there, but it’s not all the same size any more.
If writing the whole list feels like too much today, write down just the three things that are loudest.
Four ways to take something off
You don’t need to fix the whole list. Pick one thing and take it off, or make it smaller. There are four ways to do that, and most things fit at least one.
Drop it. Ask what would actually happen if you didn’t do it. Sometimes the answer is “someone would be a bit disappointed”, and that may be a price worth paying for now.
Hand it over. Ask who else could do it, even if they’d do it differently. A partner, a colleague, a friend, a paid service if that’s possible for you.
Make it smaller. Ask what the smallest version would be that’s good enough. A shorter report, a simpler dinner, a phone call instead of a visit.
Move it. Ask whether the date can change. Some deadlines can move, and asking is the only way to find out.
Then pick one step you can take this week and decide when you’ll do it. Something like “On Monday morning I’ll email Sara and ask whether the report can move to next Friday.”
On a day with no energy, the smallest version is to choose one thing on the list that can wait, and tell one person that it’s going to wait.
If you’d like help working through one thing, step by step, there’s a tool for that at the end of this post.
If it’s mostly work
Health and safety bodies treat too much work as a problem with how work is organised, not a personal failing. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work lists excessive workload as a risk to health that comes from how work is designed and managed. It says employers in the EU have a legal responsibility to assess and control risks like this, and that it works better when workers are involved (EU-OSHA). In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive’s standard is that employees can cope with the demands of their jobs, and that there’s a way to raise concerns (HSE, “Demands”).
That doesn’t make the conversation easy, but it does mean you’re allowed to have it. Some ways to start:
- “I’ve got A, B and C due this week. I can do two of them well. Which one matters most?”
- “If I take this on, something else will have to move. What would you like me to put on hold?”
- “I’ve been working evenings to keep up, and I can’t keep doing that. Can we look at my workload together?”
Being specific helps. A list of what’s on your desk is easier to discuss than “I’m stressed”. If talking to your manager doesn’t help, or isn’t safe, a union, a workplace safety representative or HR may be able to.
What tends to backfire
Working longer to catch up. It can work for a few days. Over weeks, long hours leave less time to recover. Researchers who study recovery from work link long hours and lots of overtime to poorer recovery, including difficulty relaxing at home (Geurts and Sonnentag, 2006).
Cutting the things that keep you going first. When time is short, sleep, exercise and seeing people can be the first to go, because nobody is chasing you for them. Recovery research links activities like exercise in your time off with feeling less worn out (Sonnentag and colleagues, 2017).
Reorganising the list instead of taking something off it. A new app or a better system can feel like progress. If the load is too big, it’s still too big afterwards.
Saying yes to everything new while you sort out the old. While you’re overloaded, it’s fair to say “not right now” to new requests.
Dropping things because they scare you. If you drop a task, your life stays the same size. If you keep avoiding something because it frightens you, your life gets a little smaller each time. Both feel like relief, so they can be hard to tell apart. If it’s the second, have a look at the avoidance section of our post on the different kinds of stress.
What about the stress itself?
Taking something off your plate changes the load. It may not switch off the stress in your body straight away, and that’s normal. A walk, slow breathing or talking to someone can help alongside it. There’s more about this in our post on the problem and the stress.
When to talk to someone
See a doctor if you’re struggling to cope, or if what you’re trying yourself isn’t helping (NHS, “Stress”). The same goes if you’re exhausted most days, you’re sleeping badly for weeks, or nothing on your plate seems like it can change. You don’t need to wait until it’s severe. Most people feel stressed at some point in their life, and support is available.
Some parts of a load need a particular kind of help. That might be free debt advice, a carer’s organisation, a union, or a lawyer.
If you’ve had thoughts of not wanting to be here, seek urgent support. If you’re in danger right now, call your local emergency number. Crisis lines are listed at the bottom of this page.
Where this can go
A load usually doesn’t get lighter all at once. It tends to happen one thing at a time: one deadline moved, one task handed over, one evening back. A week where it all piles up again doesn’t mean you’re back where you started. The things you’ve already taken off are still off.
And taking things off isn’t the same as wanting less from your life. Making room now can be how you get back to the things that matter to you.
Questions people ask
What if everything on the list really is essential?
Then the question is often “essential to whom, and by when?” Some things are essential but not this week. Some are essential, but someone else could do them. If after that it still all has to be you, and all now, that’s a sign the load is too big, and worth talking to someone about, at work or at home.
What if I feel guilty saying no?
If you’re used to being the one others rely on, saying no can feel wrong even when it’s fair. Feeling guilty doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It can help to say what you can do instead: “I can’t do it this week, but I could on the 20th.”
What if I work for myself, or the load is caring for someone?
There may be no manager to talk to, but the four questions still work: drop, hand over, shrink or move. For caring, carers’ organisations and your doctor can tell you what support exists where you live.
Sources
- Masicampo, E. J. and Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683.
- Aeon, B., Faber, A. and Panaccio, A. (2021). Does time management work? A meta-analysis. PLoS ONE, 16(1), e0245066.
- European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). Psychosocial risks and mental health at work.
- Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Management Standards: Demands.
- Geurts, S. A. E. and Sonnentag, S. (2006). Recovery as an explanatory mechanism in the relation between acute stress reactions and chronic health impairment. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 32(6), 482–492.
- Sonnentag, S., Venz, L. and Casper, A. (2017). Advances in recovery research: what have we learned? What should be done next? Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), 365–380.
- NHS. Stress.
