Last week really sucked for me.

I had too much going on: projects with tight deadlines. Meetings that kept me from getting work done. A confusing and scary letter from the IRS.

I felt overwhelmed and defeated.

Worse yet, the stress of it made it hard for me to focus. I knew I needed to just buckle down and make progress. But I couldn’t. I was falling farther behind as new deadlines that had been reasonable became tight deadlines.

It happens to everyone. Work is just like that. Some jobs are worse than others, but those days (or weeks) are inevitable.

In those times of overwhelm, here are some things to do that can help:

Stop, get quiet, take a deep breath, and look at your situation

This can be hard to do when you feel buried in work. All your instincts are telling you: Go! Go! Go!

But sometimes your best way forward is to stop – even for just a few minutes.

Overwhelm is a feeling, not a fact. Of course, it is probably connected to some real-world situations, not just a flimsy sense that you can decide to will away.

That’s why it can help to look closely at your situation and separate the feeling from the facts. This won’t make it go away, but it will help you stop (or slow down) the feedback loop that the feeling of overwhelm can start. This will help clarify your thinking about your situation.

Mercilessly prioritize

When you’re super busy, it’s easy to slip into treating all your tasks as equally important – all of them are screaming emergencies. But this attitude can trap you in a kind of panicked unproductive space. Without priorities, you will struggle to make progress.

You might be tempted to categorize by level of urgency or by deadline – things with the soonest (or already passed) deadlines go first. This will not help very much. The hidden truth is that there is little correlation between “urgent” and “important.” In fact, there’s often an inverse relationship between the two!

A better way is to categorize by level of importance into three groups: “Must-Haves,” “Should-Haves,” and “Good-to-Haves”:

• Must-Haves: These are essential for success.
• Should-Haves: Important but not critical.
• Good-to-Haves: Beneficial but not essential.

Focus on the Must-Haves.

It’s possible your workplace culture calls everything a Must-Have and doesn’t allow this kind of thinking about tasks. That is toxic! Make it a long-term goal to either change that, or escape it.

Break Overwhelming Tasks into Smaller Ones

Breaking up tasks helps make them less intimidating and helps you make more visible progress. Small victories can energize you to win larger ones.

Bonus: This process sometimes can help you “farm out” some of your tasks by showing how it’s not just one massive job that only you can do, but a group of smaller things that maybe others can do.

Ask yourself some hard questions

Sometimes, you cause your own sense of overwhelm. Everyone does this at times. So in those moments, ask yourself questions like these:

• Am I making this more difficult because I’m trying to practice perfectionism? You might be making things a lot more difficult than they need to be.
• Am I scaring myself by telling myself stories of failure? Self-told stories that focus on the negative can turn any task into an impossible barrier. Negative stories tend to build on themselves until it becomes hard to think clearly, much less make progress.
• Have I cornered myself into an impossible situation? Maybe you agreed to something you could not achieve. Or in a moment of over-confidence you took on too much at once. You may not be able to get out of it this time, but if you tend to do that (as so many people do) you can work to avoid it next time.
• Have I lost sight of a larger or more important goal? Panic does that to us. We get wrapped up in the emergency of the moment and lose control of what we really need to be doing! Think about what matters most to you – professionally and personally – and look for ways to stay on your larger task.

Ask for help

You might be surprised what people can do for you! If your workplace culture doesn’t allow reaching out for help, it is not a healthy place. And if your own personality doesn’t allow it, you are going to struggle with this constantly until you find your own work-around.

Be kind

Don’t beat yourself up. Find thought patterns and habits that are clarifying and comforting.

Also, don’t beat anyone else up either.

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• 4 Ways to Reclaim Your Productivity from Negative Emotions
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• The Tool That Can Take Back Control of Your Fundraising Life