Practical ways to get going when the workload is overwhelming

Posted by Doug on December 8, 2008

Most of us, at one time or another, find ourselves in a place like this:  our work has piled up, for whatever reason, and there is so much to do that we don’t even know where to start–it’s paralyzing, in a way.  This probably happens to some of us more than others, depending on a variety of factors.  I’ve had whole days when I got essentially nothing done because I simply couldn’t figure out where to start.

How did I get here?

Whether your work overload is a rare thing or a consistent pattern in your life, it’s helpful to consider how you got into that situation, provided you take steps to keep it from happening again.  Sometimes the reasons are entirely beyond your control–a supervisor suddenly assigns you a massive project with an unreasonable deadline; you become seriously ill and unable to work for an extended period of time; your business experiences a rapid, unanticipated growth spurt; your business partner suddenly quits, leaving all of her work in your lap.  I suspect, however, that much of the time, the work piles up for reasons that you probably can control:  procrastination, disorganization, bad prioritization, and yes, even laziness.  Perhaps you just took on too much work–it wouldn’t be the first time someone bit off more than they could chew.

But you probably already know how you got into this mess.  The question is, what do you do now?  How do you get off dead-center, or push past the paralysis that has settled in on you, making the problem worse all the time?

The answer is the same as the answer to the old proverbial question, “How do you eat a 500-pound banana?”  One bite at a time.  Here are some suggestions for how to begin chipping away at the mountain:

Assess your situation honestly.

When a debt counselor works with a client who is drowning in financial obligations, often one of the first steps is to do what the client has been avoiding–make a list of all of the money he owes.  Likewise, if you’re drowning under an overwhelming pile of backed-up work, you need to sit down and make a list of everything in the stack. Like the person in debt facing up to what they owe, you may find this to be a daunting, unpleasant task, but it is the only way you can begin to get back in control.  List everything, including the big projects, the small projects, and the routine tasks.

Break the big tasks into smaller pieces.

A task like “plan the conference” is too big and broad to be helpful to you.  Break every big item on your list into several smaller, more concise tasks.  Yes, it will make your list longer, but you’ve got to know what you’re up against, and when you begin prioritizing, you may find that there are some little tasks within those big tasks that might require higher priority than the bigger task as a whole.  For example, “plan the conference” is a big task, but “book the conference venue” is a smaller task that has a much higher priority than many of the other bits of the larger task.

Prioritize the list as best you can.

Do it in several passes.  On your first pass through the list, identify the tasks that are absolutely the most critical, if-I-don’t-get-this-done-I’m-fired sort of things.  It isn’t always the case that the highest priority tasks are those that are the most overdue or the oldest deadlines on the list–in fact, some of those tasks probably have become irrelevant, and you should cull those from the list.   Set yourself no more than three or four priority categories–every item on the list should be assigned to one of those categories.  When everything is divided into those priority lists, prioritize the items within each of those lists.

Delegate what you can.

Granted, for most of those of us who work in home offices, there may not be anyone to whom we can delegate anything.  “Delegating” for us might mean outsourcing.  As you look through your lists, are there things that you would normally do yourself that would be worth paying someone else to do, under the circumstances?

Begin working the list one task at a time.

Take a deep breath and tell yourself that today you are going to begin to turn this thing around.  Begin with the highest priority item on the highest priority list, and focus on that task as if it were the only thing on your plate.  If you let yourself think about the rest of the list, or the other lists, or the size of the workload, pretty soon you’re going to be paralyzed again, or at least so distracted and discouraged that completing the work at hand is going to be much harder.

The difficult thing here is that when the work piles up, your brain will try to remind you that the time you spend working on one task is time that you can’t spend on the others, and that those other tasks are just going to fall further behind.  This is absolutely true, but you can’t let yourself focus on that.  It is better to get one thing done than to get no things done, and the sooner you get that first item on the list done, the sooner you’ll get to the second item.

Work hard, but be reasonable.

There’s no way around the fact that you’ve got a lot of work to do, and it’s going to be difficult to get caught up–you’re going to have to bust your tail for a while.  But with that said, it’s also important to remember that the quality of your work suffers when you’re exhausted, and trying to “binge work” your way through the list will probably end up badly for you.  Maybe you will have to work some somewhat longer work days for a while, but  if you don’t get enough rest, relaxation, time with your family, or other diversion, you won’t be able to do your best, and you’re likely to end up sick, or going nuts, which doesn’t do anyone any good.

Put up a “breakwater.”

The mouth of a harbor is often protected from the waves of the open sea by constructing a breakwater, a long barrier that helps break up the waves before they can get into the harbor.  Your breakwater is whatever measures you can take to stem the tide of incoming tasks for a while, so that the overwhelming pile of work doesn’t just keep growing.  Your temptation, as a freelancer, for example, might be to accept any and all incoming jobs, to keep the cash flowing, but unless you’re making a lot of progress on that backed-up mountain of work, is this wise?  As hard as it might be for you, until you get things a bit more under control, you might need to tell a potential client that you’re swamped at the moment, but that you want to work with them and will get back to them in a month (or whenever).

Let the machine get it.

Unless your contract with your clients or customers dictates otherwise, you really don’t have to answer the phone every time it rings.  You could put a message on your voicemail or answering machine that says something like this:  “I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now.  However, I should be able to take your call or return your call between three and five this afternoon.  Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”  You can do something similar with your email: instead of checking your email every ten minutes, agree with yourself to check it once or twice a day, at most.  These tactics may get you some additional uninterrupted time to get caught up.

Get something done.

If you’ve made your lists and you’re still overwhelmed and can’t get started, find something else to do for a while–do a housecleaning chore, replace a burned-out light bulb, go around the house and test your smoke alarms, clean a toilet, rake some leaves, change the oil in your car, run a few errands–just do something so you can at least tell yourself that you haven’t wasted the day.  The fact that you accomplished something may boost your self-esteem a bit, and that may help you get moving.

Clean up your surroundings.

I’ve seen this tip in multiple places, because it seems to work.  If your physical work space is as stacked up and cluttered as the pile of work you’re facing, it can be hard to be productive.  Whenever I’m beginning to feel like there’s just too much to do, it always helps to clean up my office and make some space on my desk and in the room.  I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but perhaps doing the same with your computer desktop might be equally helpful, if you use a computer for your work.

I’ve been in this situation more times than I care to admit, but I have learned that a mountain of work looks scarier from a distance–when you get up close and see what it’s made of, it’s just a big pile of individual things that you know how to do.  Figure out where to start, and you’re well on your way to reducing the mountain to something that will fit comfortably in your inbox.

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