At the beginning of the year are you already wanting to crawl into a hole and hide? Overwhelmed by lists, ‘to-dos’ and your personal goals. The demands of work and home, family, errands and organisation, health and sport, friends and events. Its enough to overwhelm anyone!

Every great leader I know is striving for improvement. It is the desire to never settle for average, that causes us to go for greater. This goal setting, achievement drive is positive in focused areas, but if it drives your whole life its a recipe for disaster.

It’s been said that ‘You can have it all, just not all at the same time’.

If you try to achieve too much, in too many areas, you’ll end up achieving nothing. Perfectionism is paralysing. And we can get caught in this trap without even knowing we’ve done it.

A few things to remember:

1. A goal in one area of life impacts another: You only have 24 hours in one day and you’re not a machine. Too much stress in too many areas of our lives is a recipe for breakdown.

Learn the art of balance. For example: if you’re currently leading a work project that is requiring extra hours, it’s probably not the right time to take on study.

2. Prioritise: the emotion of overwhelm is normally just a sign that you haven’t sat down and prioritised.

Create a list with the following titles – What do you I need to do? What could I delegate to someone else (either work or home)? What could I leave for later?

Bill Gates said “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” 

3. Lean into your season: learn to accept the limitations of each season as temporal and don’t get caught up in frustration. Different seasons of our lives require different things, and although they feel like they will last forever, the very rarely do.

In order to make no-regret decisions for the future, I always ask myself ‘in 10 years time what will I wish I did in this situation?’. This change of perspective can help align your priorities.

4. Choose one area of focus: rather than trying to improve every area of your life, choose one area to work on at a time. This will also help align your priorities and make daily decisions easier.

As always, be kind to yourself. The very fact that you are feeling overwhelmed is because you are wanting to move forward.

Now I’d love to hear from you – what strategies have you found that decrease your overwhelm?