How to not get overwhelmed at work
Did you recently have crazy busy times and now you are overwhelmed at work? You’ve come to the right place to know the exact steps to beat the overwhelmed at work after busy times. Wave goodbye to the struggle, because I’m sharing the exact steps that I use to reset my life at work and have worked many times. These will
- Get you out of the side effects of busy times spent.
- Reset your work-life balance
- Get you to bounce back to your routine
Let’s look at how it’s done.
Getting back to life after busy times
In spite of being well organized or even the most sorted with a great routine, people get into unexpected situations in life that keep them crazy busy and you are just off track with everything.
We all can get in these situations, where we have a project deadline, an important life event, or an unexpected crisis, that just makes us work long hours, do extra work, and ignore our diet and sleep. But what can we do about it…. Work needs to be done. I get it…. there are times when we need to prioritize certain things over something else.
And I know for sure you too have been in these situations, totally relatable.
I find myself particularly in this situation when I have audits at work. Oh… it’s crazy busy. I will be working late, getting to work early in the morning, doing work at home, skipping lunch, eating takeaways for dinner and my house will be a mess, pile of laundry, dirty kitchen…. will that’s a different story.
But I don’t worry much about it now. Over the years I have learned how to get back from the phase of an imbalanced busy life to my normal life. And, I am sharing the same with you. If it can work for me, I am very sure this will work for you too.
Why do you need to reset your work-life after busy times?
- Long working hours can result in fatigue.
- It can reduce your productivity.
- If not attended you may get stuck in a busy schedule for a long.
- You can develop work stress with long work hours.
- It can also affect your health.
- It can affect relationships with your loved ones.
Now that you know it is really essential to get out of your busy mode and reset your work and life
Steps to reset your Work and Life after busy times
Let’s get started with the exact steps to get started with after a busy time to rest your life.
Step 1: Make peace with the mess
You were crazy busy, and you tried everything best possible to make things work well, and now that you are done with the giant work at your hand and that the busy times have passed, you can get back to the routine of life.
Let’s accept the fact that things were crazy, you didn’t take care of yourself or spend time with family, you have other tasks at work that are overdue and you have many people chasing you to reply to emails.
It’s ok. Just tell yourself it’s okay! There is no point in being anxious or overwhelmed. We have a mess around and it will be sorted. No big deals.
This step may sound silly but believe me it is effective, setting the right mindset to start the reset is so very important. Otherwise, it may make you get entrapped in emotions of anxiety or a guilt trip of not being able to handle the work right.
So, take a deep breath and say, it is ok! I can bounce back
Step 2: Recover from burnout
All this crazy busy time was not easy for you, you have spent a lot of time working hard, skipped your meals, and burned midnight oil….(uuummm well, drained your laptop would be the right phrase).
You are exhausted and to reset your life back you need to reset yourself first.
I would recommend taking a break from work for a day or leaving early from work, getting yourself your favorite food, after all, you deserve a treat after working so hard and being able to come through the crazy busy times. Spend some time with your loved ones and catch up with what you missed.
Get the sleep you had compromised in a few days. It is very essential to be productive and function normally.
Step 3: Brain Dump
Now that you are all recharged, let’s get to the serious work at hand.
You would be having hundreds of thoughts running in your mind and all the things that have piled up. The best way to handle this is by dumping all your thoughts on a piece of paper, this is called brain dumping. You can also use a Word doc or notepad if you are a digital person.
Set a timer for 3 minutes and write down all the thoughts that come to your mind, don’t worry about the word, spelling, or it is right or wrong, just pour your thoughts out of your brain.
Once done believe me you will feel so light and relaxed.
If you have more to write, keep going on with it. The timer is just to get you started.
I often keep adding to it later too, as I keep remembering. This is just to know what all we have at our hand to deal with.
Make a To-Do list of all that needs to be done. Most of the time we end up overwhelmed because we do not make the To-Do list the right way, here are 10 Ways To Make An Effective To-Do List.
Step 4: Prioritise and Plan
Brain dump gave us clarity on all the work that needs to be done. You may have a lot of work at hand and all may seem to be urgent and important but you cannot do everything at once. So next, we need to prioritize the work.
A very popular way to prioritize is by the “Eisenhower Method”. It basically means you divide your work into 4 quadrants as below.
All the work that you think is important and urgent will fall in the first quadrant and should be your priority, similarly, any work that is important but not urgent may be taken up next and will be your next priority.
All the work that is not important but urgent can be delegated to your subordinates or planned later. All the work that is not important and not urgent will not be of value to you and should be reconsidered and avoided.
To know more about prioritizing work read How to prioritize work tasks.
And just with these, you know the direction you need to head on to reset your balance at work.
With clarity in mind on the priority, now is the time to plan the work.
- Assign a dedicated day and time to each work.
- Make sure to be realistic with the amount of time work would require while planning.
- Stick to the schedule you have planned.
I would not recommend planning on extra work hours to do this task but rather squeeze them with the routine work by being more effective, as we don’t want to get back into the cycle of getting busy and exhausted again. To make the most of your day read How to have a productive day
Step 5: Communicate your situation
When you have a lot of work piled up there is additional pressure as people are expecting replies from you or expecting the work at a particular time.
It is very important if you inform them that you have been dealing with a particular time period where it was just overwhelming and busy and you were focusing on other priorities so the work is off schedule. Now that you’re working to get it back, there may be some delays.
Additionally based on your planning in the previous step you can even communicate the expected date of the work. Trust me, people will appreciate it and understand your situation because each and every one of us has gone through this phase. It’s not that you are alone dealing with it.
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Conclusion
We all have busy times in life that put us off balance with work, life, and our routine. Things may seem to be crazy but if dealt with the right way it can get back to normal. Make peace with the mess around, recover yourself, brain dump to clear your head followed by prioritizing work and planning. It will be good to communicate your situation and the delays expected at work with others to ease the pressure.
Lastly, take it easy and reward yourself for resetting your work life after busy times, you deserve it.
Now that you have all the steps to reset your work life after busy times, You need not worry about dealing with the chaos after busy times. If you are already in it, get started with these steps now and bounce back to your routine.
Have questions about this post? Leave them in the comments below and we’ll talk it out!
Related posts you may like:
12 Smart Strategies to Help You Work Smarter, Not Harder
10 Tips for Achieving Work-Life Balance
10 self-care at work tips for your wellness at the workplace
