Beating Overwhelm 🧠
TL;DR Summary:
The Neuroscience of Overwhelm
Dealing with Information Overload
Brain Dump
The CPA Process
The 3M1M Process
Bonus
The Information Problem
Do you have a never-ending to-do list? Do you constantly take on more than you can handle? Do you feel like you are behind on everything and behind everyone else? A lot of the people I work with do, and in today’s world, I can’t say that I’m surprised…
For most of us, information, notifications, and tasks flood into our brains at a rapid rate and so it makes sense that 74% of the population is stressed & overwhelmed, worse of all, a ton of people don’t even know how to cope!
To figure out what’s going on here, we need to take a look at some of the underlying Neuroscience, and how our “working memory” works.
Neurologically, this flood of information overextends our “working memory.” Which is what you use to remember small bits of information moment by moment.
Some common examples are keeping a person’s address in mind while being given directions or dialing a phone number you were just told.
You only need to remember the numbers long enough to dial them, after that, the memory fades.
When so much information is coming in as we talked about earlier, your working memory capacity is overwhelmed. This type of overload on your working memory reduces your concentration, attention, problem-solving ability, and decisiveness.
Not only that, but more recent research shows that during working memory overload, your amygdala activity increases as well.
The amygdala is the regulator of your emotions and is what’s causing you to feel stressed and in some cases, can even cause your Fight-Flight or Freeze response to activate.
Worst of all… Working-memory overload decreases activity in the parts of your brain that help you control your positive self-talk…
Put simply, you are physically less able to regulate your negative emotions, your self-talk, and your self-concept (the way you view yourself). This causes the world around you to become much more negative.
If you don’t have a way to organize the chaos of information that is flooding into your brain, you’re left with an information wrecking ball inside your mind that physically causes parts of your brain to shut down… Yikes.
Dealing with Information Overload
I’m going to cover two ways you can deal with this overload today! Both are common knowledge, but sadly, not common practice!
The first way to start to get a handle on this is by doing a good ole fashioned Brain Dump!
Dump all of the things spinning around in your head onto one piece of paper or into one document.
Writing it is ideal, but a Google Doc works too!
This is massively important because 70% of your brain is wired for visual processing, until you've written all of these questions and thoughts down, your brain can't "SEE" what's going on, which is where that underlying sense of anxiety you feel comes from...
It's your brain trying to process everything coming in and everything that’s already in there but being unable to because it's flying blind!
Once you get all the moving thoughts out on paper your brain can navigate it better.
Treat this Brain Dump list like a puzzle to solve. You can organize it however you’d like. Some people like to just dump it all down with no real order, and some people like categories, what works best for you?
Once you have the Brain-Dumped list it’s time to simplify it!
To do this, we are going to use a process called Chunking Down.
This isn’t an overly complicated technique, all you have to do is break apart the information you just Brain Dumped into its smaller pieces, then group those pieces together!
Chunking down helps you make sure you have all of the actionable pieces of your plan and grouping it together allows you to use the next step to prioritize the larger chunks of information.
Once you’ve got everything grouped together, it’s time to prioritize them based on what is most urgent or important. Which cannot be missed? What has to be done first?
I like to use a process called 3M1M for this, which stands for 3 Most, 1 Must. This is an easy way to attack a list like this.
Once you have the list all written out, go through it and pull out the 3 Most important ones, and of those 3, which 1 MUST you do?
Then start on the Must first, and the other 2 after you complete what Must be done.
The pieces you’ve broken down should be small enough that they’re easy to start on, if you’re still feeling some friction, break them down further.
I have been known to start by writing 1 single sentence or making 1 single call I needed to make, once I’ve started, the rest of the task becomes easy, and once I’m in a flow the prioritized Brain Dumped list becomes easy to work through!
After you finish your first 3M1M, go back to your list and repeat the 3M1M prioritization process again, you can keep doing this until you’ve finished your list.
I call this process CPA:
Chunk Down & Together
Prioritize what is most pressing with 3M1M
Act
A quick note, if something continues to get pushed down to the bottom of your list as you’re prioritizing, this may be something you should delegate, or figure out if it’s truly worth your time to have on your list at all.
3M1M Example
Let’s run through an example of this so you can get a feel for how it works! One of my clients gave me permission to use her list as long as I take out any important company details.
She’s an AI developer, so she’s got some pretty crazy task lists/Brain Dumps she has used this process for before!
For this example, she had 4 work deadlines on 3 big projects she needed to complete. One of the projects she wasn’t even sure how to do, so she knew it would need some extra time allotted to it for learning!
She also had personal things on her list like taking her dog to the vet, cleaning her house, and meal prepping for the week.
The last thing she had was a last-minute task she remembered while doing her brain dump which had to do with a client project, and she also wanted to make sure she workouts 2 more times this week, oh and she needed some new shoes for work.
So, here’s the full list:
Deadline 1
Deadline 2
Project 2
Take dog to vet
Deadline 3
Clean house
Deadline 4
Project 1
Meal prep
Facebook Banner for Client Project
Project 3
Workout 2x
Get new shoes
She also knew she needed to add in learning time for Project 3, so she added some learning objectives under that task, added some additional steps to cleaning the apartment, and added getting groceries to meal prep.
New list:
Deadline 1
Deadline 2
Project 2
Take dog to vet
Deadline 3
Clean house
Take out trash
Sweep floor
Do laundry
Clean dishes
Deadline 4
Project 1
Meal prep
Get groceries
Facebook Banner for Client Project
Project 3
Learning objective, what do I specifically need to learn?
Where will I find this information?
How long will I spend learning?
Workout 2x
Get new shoes
This completes the Chunking Down portion, so this is her master list. No wonder she was overwhelmed, just reading all of these things is making me a little stressed, ha!
Now that she’s got the master list, it’s time to organize things by grouping them together. The first two groups she made for this list were, Personal & Professional!
After doing that, she was able to see that some of these things could go together, so she regrouped the list one final time!
Final List
Professional
Project 2
Deadline 1
Deadline 2
Project 1
Deadline 3
Project 3
Deadline 4
Learning objective, what do I specifically need to learn?
Where will I find this information?
How long will I spend learning?
Facebook Banner for Client Project
Get new shoes for work
Personal
Take dog to vet
Clean house
Take out trash
Sweep floor
Do laundry
Clean dishes
Meal prep
Get groceries
Cook the food
Package the food
Workout 2x
Now that she’s got her final list, she can prioritize! Big picture, what are the most important things to get done? To do this, she used the 3M1M process to decide:
3M1M
Must: Take dog to vet
Most: Deadlines 1 & 2 from Project 2
Most: Getting new shoes for work
Inside Her Mind
I told her I was going to be using her list as an example, so I asked if she would share her thought process on her list so that you guys could see into her mind a bit!
When I asked, she said that the dog was sick so that was the most urgent thing to get done.
Next, Project 2 was due the soonest, and its two deadlines related to one another so that would be an easy way to kill two birds with one stone.
And last, on her initial 3M1M was the shoes because her other work shoes didn’t fit anymore, so to go in for her meetings next week, she would need new shoes!
Once she finished this, she came back to her list and did the process again.
Next 3M1M
Must: Learning Object for Project 3
Most: Deadline 3 from Project 1
Most: Deadline 4 from Project 3
For time’s sake we won’t go through every single 3M1M she did for this list, but I’m sure that you understand the process by now!
Repeat this process until your list is complete.
By Brain Dumping out all of the things bouncing around in her head, she was able to see why she was feeling so overwhelmed.
Once she had her list, she was able to use the CPA process to simplify it, and move into action much faster!
You can do this too when you’re feeling overwhelmed with all of the information floating around in your head.
I know you’ll be surprised how much more effective you can be on a daily basis when you actually have a way to deal with the feeling of overwhelm, good luck!
Bonus:
One more quick tip before you go! Another way to break down overwhelm would be to chunk out areas of your life.
Sometimes it can feel like we aren’t accomplishing what we need to with our lives, which can feel overwhelming as well!
You can use this same process for that feeling too, but instead of work/personal, use groups like Family, Career, Spiritual, Finance, Relationships, etc.
Then Brain Dump all that you want out of these areas, use the CPA process to organize the list, prioritize them with the 3M1M process and then ACT!
If you liked this blog, and are curious about how we attack the Mental Health problems that arise in the midst of misinformation & overwhelm, be sure to watch your inbox for our next blog until then... Live Heroically 🔥