Overwhelm is one of those emotions you can feel deeply but struggle to understand logically. Where does it come from? What’s the root cause of overwhelm? How long does it last? And most importantly—how do you get rid of it?
I think about overwhelm a lot because it’s something many of my clients mention during our onboarding calls. Recently, I developed a simple framework that “solved overwhelm” for me. It’s no longer that mysterious, unexplainable beast of an emotion.
The Root Cause of Overwhelm
My hypothesis:
Overwhelm happens when we feel like we need to do many things simultaneously rather than sequentially.
Once I understood this, I realized the key to overcoming overwhelm is shifting from simultaneous to sequential execution of tasks and projects at all levels—big picture, medium-term, sprint planning, and daily planning.
The solution is to label as many tasks as “not right now” as possible. When we apply this approach across all levels, things stop feeling so overwhelming.
Big Picture: Different Seasons of Life
Life has different seasons, and not everything needs to happen at the same time.
For example, I love the idea of having a garden, growing my own vegetables and fruits, and maybe even building a small homestead. I watch YouTube videos about it for fun, but I know this is a goal for a different season of life. It’s not something I need to worry about right now while I’m having small kids and growing two businesses. So this project is labeled “not this season of life.”
Accepting this brings clarity and removes unnecessary stress. It’s still on my long-term to-do list, but I don’t need to worry about it right now.
Medium-Term: Different Sprints
Sprint planning follows the same principle—doing things sequentially rather than all at once.
We keep a backlog—a place to collect potential tasks and projects for future sprints. This is different from a traditional to-do list because nothing in the backlog is a commitment yet. Instead, we give ourselves time and space to evaluate our options and choose a few high-impact projects for the next sprint.
Instead of tackling everything at once, we pick a limited number of projects per sprint based on our sprint capacity. Everything else gets the “not this sprint” label.
Over the course of a year, this adds up. For me, it’s about 60 completed projects—but they are done sequentially, not all at once.
Short-term: Limits on “Work in Progress” Column
Even within a sprint, great Agile teams limit how many tasks they work on at once. There is a limit on the “work in progress”. They can only start a new project once they complete one that’s already in progress.
I apply the same principle. On my scrum board, I move only two sprint projects into the “In Progress” column at a time. This prevents me from juggling too much and reduces cognitive overload.
Why two? Because every project has natural stopping points—waiting for a response, waiting for another person to complete their portion of the work, waiting for a report, or waiting for a system update. Instead of idly waiting, I shift to the second project. I go back and forth between the two until at least one is complete.
I recommend keeping your work-in-progress limit at two or three projects max (better two) to prevent overwhelm.
Daily: Time Blocking & Task Prioritization
On a daily level, time blocking (creating an hourly schedule) reinforces the habit of working sequentially instead of trying to multitask.
Rather than facing an overwhelming to-do list, I create a daily schedule each morning. This tells my brain that it only needs to focus on one thing at any given time.
Sometimes I do strict time blocking with assigned time slots. Other times, I prefer flexible time blocking. But I always try to time block my work hours only and keep my evenings and weekends more flexible.
If time blocking feels stressful, I use a simple trick:
- I write a prioritized to-do list for the day and cover everything except the first task with a sticky note.
- Once I finish the first task, I slide the sticky note down to reveal the next one.
This small tweak prevents my brain from panicking over the entire list at once. The goal is to send a clear message to your brain: you only need to focus on this one thing.
A similar method is using index cards with one task per card. Keep them stacked so you only see the top card, focusing on one task at a time.
The Key Takeaway
Overwhelm comes from believing we must handle everything at the same time. The solution? Send a message to our brain (with the help of our productivity system) that we work sequentially, one task at a time.
Try it out—whether at the big-picture level, sprint level, or even daily execution—and see how much calmer and more productive you feel when you can put the “not right now” label on your overwhelming to-do list.
P.S.: This was one of the lessons published during our February sprint inside the Focus Room—a community where we do live group sprints.
Inside the club, we also do live working sessions twice a week, inspired by the core practice that helped me finish grad school early. These sessions have been great for getting hard or boring work done.
