This the season. The year is winding down (sort of) and if you’re like me, you’re looking ahead at finishing Q4 strong, prepping for the holiday season, thinking about 2023 race goals, planning to start a new work project while continuing all the rest, attempting to train your dog while kitting out your van, and all while still training / eating right / sleeping enough / spending time with friends. Obviously, yours probably looks slightly different, but I’m guessing I’m not alone in feeling that looming sense of overwhelm, like you’re one task away from everything toppling. You think: Something’s gotta give… Right? In fact, you’re hoping for it, because once one ball drops, maybe the rest will be easier to juggle, or you’ll have to toss them all away in favor of handling whatever the major situation is at the time.
If you’re reading this, you’ve likely been in this situation: You’re feeling overwhelmed, teetering on burnout, but still trying to make training and racing happen. Maybe work has gotten progressively more hectic, or you’re dealing with some life stresses at home (kids, finances, whatever). Maybe some of it is positive stress: A new job you’re psyched on, a big move or sale that you’d been hoping for. But either way, your cup—as we love to talk about on here—runneth over.
And if you’re reading this, you probably are nodding your head, but also having a similar thought to what I constantly come back to: When does it reset / pause? When does it become too much, and you just can’t fit it all in? When does it come crashing down…. or worse in some ways, what if it doesn’t? What if you can, in fact, handle it all—at least for now? I think this is where a lot of us get caught: We’re “balancing” precariously, but not able to fully commit to projects/people/passions as a result.
This, I think, is where many of us are stuck right now, based on conversations I seem to be having more often: Juggling an increasing number of balls in the air, and sure, one might occasionally hit the ground, but the rest are generally staying up. This isn’t the worst spot to be in—it generally means lots of opportunities abound—but it can be tricky from a long-term perspective. There’s only so far you can go in any one direction. To take the juggling metaphor a bit further, imagine juggling 20 balls in the air. You’re likely pretty stationary while you try to keep them all up. But if you’re juggling 3 or 4? Heck, you can run a marathon like that! You can light those balls on fire and still handle that load. Basically, if you have a lot of balls in the air, your only focus is not dropping them. If you have a select few, you can get a bit fancier with your footwork, push yourself further or higher and really make each ball a star. (This metaphor is a bit tortured, but you get the idea.)
So, what can we do about it? If I had a great answer, I probably wouldn’t be writing this slightly meandering post. But I have some ideas that I’m trying to put into practice. Let’s start with the small and move up to the big:
Take 5 deep breaths right now
Or pause for five minutes, take a few minutes to write in a journal or sit outside and stare into nature. Even if it’s only 30 seconds, I find that the break helps when I’m starting to hit that ‘oh shit’ point staring at my never-ending to-do list. (Note: I paused during the writing of this post in order to check something else off as it came to mind, proving I need to take my own damn advice.)
Drop your workout down in intensity (for today) if needed
I’ve also realized that when overwhelm is looming, sometimes it’s exacerbated by having intensity in my workout for the day. For some people, an interval workout helps them blow off steam and actually calms the feeling of overwhelm, and if that’s the case for you, great! That said… if you do notice that you do these hard interval sets in the morning and feel great in the moment, but then feel like it’s impossible to get work tasks done, you may need to dial back the workout intensity on days you need to up the work intensity. Basically, get in touch with your energy and how it’s affected by exercise.
Put it all on a master list
I’ve said this before, I think a major overwhelm issue stems from people having separate calendars for work, life and training. While it’s nice to compartmentalize, we aren’t compartmentalized beings! And I think the multiple calendars ends up causing a ton of stress because we end up with full days scheduled in each of them. That’s why I keep just one master to-do list for each day and only have one calendar where everything shows up. Much easier to keep it all straight, and it often helps me see that I’ve planned far too much in one week.
Triage your to-do list + set a short timer
Once you do make the master list for the day, I like to use the term ‘triage’ for what you need to do. That’s because I tend to cringe at the ‘pick the 3 most important tasks’ advice that gets bandied around, because I think for most people, it’s crap. For example, I run social media for a cycling team I work with. That’s never on my list of 3 most important tasks, but it is critical that I do it every day. (No, it can’t be batched, because most of it is based on what riders are posting / what’s happening in the immediate moment with races!) So, when I feel overwhelmed, part of my strategy is the 30-minute triage. That means looking at the list, deciding what the absolute must-dos for the day are, and then knocking out as many of the small things as possible in a short sprint. These are things like that social media stuff, or making that appointment you know will only take a few minutes but will languish on the list all day, or sending that invoice. Then, once the list is a bit more pared down, I can focus on the actual Important Tasks.
Check on your goals
I wrote about this goal-setting conundrum a couple of weeks ago—when you feel overwhelmed, it’s partially due to what’s happening in the moment, but it’s also because of what’s looming on the horizon (even the very far horizon). I find that tends to be a big part of my problem: Looming Goal Syndrome. The pressure is on from all sides. Maybe you need to look at your list and actually drop something.
Take a rest day
A real one. From work AND from training. If possible, turn off email notifications (heck, turn off your phone) and LEAN IN to just being lazy. It’s amazing what a real day off can do for your motivation and feeling of overwhelm in just a few hours. It also gives you a bit of space to get some clarity on what it is you’ve been doing, and what might need to change—but DO NOT use this rest day to ‘journal about your business/goals/training’ or do any of those fake rest day things like long hikes or yoga, unless you actually, genuinely, really want to do them. Just do exactly what feels restful to you.
