9 Ways to Stop Overdue Tasks Causing Overwhelm & Stress
Layla shares nine strategies for managing work stress from overdue tasks, including taking breaks, negotiating scope with managers, building momentum, and planning proactively. She emphasizes process-oriented approaches to handle deadlines and reduce overwhelm.
Okay, here we go. Another day, another adventure. Oh, what are we up to? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, I am. So whether that demonstration feels like your reality or just your worst nightmare, you are watching the right video. Because. Because this sensation of being completely overwhelmed by seeing tasks that exist or especially if they're overdue, is a really stressful component of using a work management software that I don't see people talk about. And yet, if someone's using a tool and never before had a way of seeing all their work, and all of a sudden, there it is, and, hey, maybe it's overdue. This sensation of getting completely overwhelmed and stressed out is something I, and pretty much everybody I've trained on their first work management software speaking seem to experience at some point or another. So in this video, what I want to do is break down how we can overcome this stress and overwhelm and anxiety that comes from that screen of doom. And the way we're going to do that is by using some strategies. These are going to fall into two categories. One, what to do when you're already behind or feeling behind, and two, how to proactively prevent getting behind. So whether you're in the mess now or you're just afraid of the mess in the future, we're. We got you covered. So this one is a little unconventional, and I think it's definitely one that I would have probably scoffed at had someone told it to me. But just getting out of your office, your workplace, whether it's a long walk to the bathroom, long walk, long way around to the. The water tower, or just walking out with your dog, it is so, so very helpful. It's counterintuitive because you think, oh, my God, I have hundreds of tasks to do. There's no freaking way I've got time to go out for a stroll. But here's the thing. My goal is to focus on facts so I can put things in perspective and really kind of start to understand what is actually going on. Is it a matter of life and death? Is this situation something that I need to now kill myself to get right? Or more likely, is this a situation where, you know, it is what it is? These due dates were probably set arbitrarily based on a guess, and my guess turned out to be kind of wrong, so. So now I need to figure out a way out of it. Most of the time, when I come back from these kinds of walks, I go back to my due dates, and I'm like, what's the big deal? You know, it's a Hundred tasks, Woohoo. It's a hundred little pieces that say words on them. It's nothing that I need to stress out about. It's nothing that is going to kill anybody. I have yet to have a due date in my task manager that equated to life or death. And so I don't need a life or death response to it. And I think that's a helpful little perspective to have. And it's easy, easier to have if you physically relocate. I think the rookie move here is to start negotiating on due dates right away. In other words, I'm overwhelmed, therefore I need to change all my due dates. I think that's a really basic way to go about it and it's not always the right choice for me. When I'm thinking about negotiation, the first thing I'm thinking about when I'm out on my walk or sitting by a tree is what can I negotiate around the scope? This is the same thing you'll have in a sales conversation. What can go away and not really change my value at all in this case. So if I'm thinking about my due dates, thinking about my task list while I'm out of the office, you know, I might think back to like, oh my gosh, why did I see that task about, you know, updating our sales page? I don't need to do that. I did that last week. Okay, think about that next one. Oh, what about that task about, you know, processing testimonials? Couldn't I do a little bit less of that today? Isn't that a routine I could skip? Yeah, I like to do this out of the office because then I'm only thinking about the things that are big in my head. And usually that tells me in and of itself when I go back, what, what things aren't important. Because if I couldn't even think of it when I'm out of the office, how important could it really be once I've kind of exhausted that and I've negotiated as much of the scope as I can, in my view. And I might want to bring this to a manager, by the way, if I want a second perspective. But at that point I might want to negotiate on who. So maybe everything needs to be done, but do I need to do it all? Could my assistant, could a team member, could my manager help me? Is there other people who might be able to support me on this? And I'm going to start thinking about that while I'm out. Like for example. Wow. I have this task to review some case studies I Have to proofread them. Could I have AI proofread them for me? Probably. I'll do that. Now, once you finish negotiating on the actual scope and the who and all that stuff, and you start negotiating on where you walk, because apparently Norman has a mind of his own today, isn't that right? Yeah. Okay, then it might be time to start negotiating on the actual due dates itself. And in this case, proceed with caution. But as you're on your walk back from the bathroom, maybe think about if there's anything that you saw on that list that you're like, hmm, you know, I could probably do that next week and it would be just fine. The low hanging fruit here is usually things like routine tasks. So if you have things you always do, probably a good sign that you don't need to necessarily do it today. If you have a hundred other things that can only be done today, do those first. Similarly, you might find as you go through things, that there are tasks that you have on there that actually aren't tasks. Maybe they're ideas that you kind of snuck in. Maybe I'm the only one guilty of this, but there are times where I feel like I've got nothing but time. And so I add all these nice to haves to my task list. I put them on a date and I say, yeah, I'm going to do that. And I'm not necessarily planning from the healthiest space. I'm just like, yeah, I want to do it. So I put it on the list. And if you're in this crunch time, there's no better time to audit and ask yourself, wait, are all these things really tasks, meaning things I can commit to do? If you had a nice to have idea of updating your press page, but you don't need to update that, this might be a good time to demote that. Put that back on the ideas list that you have. And if you don't have an ideas list yet, you can actually watch the video. I'll have linked up above where I talk about this idea of ideas list versus task list. I think the video talks about it in the sense of ClickUp, but it really applies to any software you use. Okay. And when you are back in the office, we've got some more tips you can do. These ones are better done in front of your screen so you can reference some things and communicate with others. But you're also welcome to do these out of the office as long as you have a way to take notes. For me, I'm going to stay back in here the third tip here is to communicate. When you're back in the office, head into your work management software or your slack or your WhatsApp group or whatever you use for work and start talking about what things are. You want to bring the stuff you were thinking about from tip number one and tip number two and share that with others. And I probably should have said this when I recorded this back in my office, but hey, we'll record it now. Change of scenery. When you're doing this, you just want to communicate that, hey, something's going on. The fastest way to make something being behind be a big problem, hey, Norman. Is if you don't tell people about it. You know, a project being late is a small problem. A project being late but no one knowing about it, that is a terrible problem. And so whatever your situation is, communicate early and often what's going on. Depending on your workplace, it might not be cool in the culture to ask for help. So maybe you don't want to do that. Maybe you just want to say, hey, heads up, this is the situation that counts. This message, say something like this, you know, hi, John. This task held behind because I spent too much time yesterday processing testimonials and feeling a bit stressed. But I'm regrouping now to make sure the real priorities get complete on time. I'm reviewing all my assignments now to see what's in important to make sure I get the most important task done. No response needed, just letting you know. I'll provide an update as soon as I have more information. This kind of message is an example of what I might send to either my manager or just comment on each task in my at risk department. Just to kind of set the expectation that hey, things are going on a little bit. I need to shake things up. This isn't physically possible. And so I'm going to set that expectation now just to make sure everyone's able to get ahead of a potential issue if there is one. Besides just preventing secrecy from making a problem worse, the benefit of this is that you're now letting other people know, hey, I might need help. And sometimes you can even get some support when you send those messages from your manager who might be able to help you reprioritize, or a team member who might have some time to help you finish some of those tasks because maybe they have some extra time in their day. So for tip number four here, I'm going to actually move us over to the whiteboard a little bit more and we're going to talk about the idea of Chasing momentum. Because now that you've let everybody know you've got your head game, right, it's time to start thinking, all right, how am I getting myself out of this? Kind of like being in a pit. You need a little momentum to push yourself out of the valley that you're in. And so that's what we want to do here. We want to look at our task list and figure out what kind of tasks are on that list. For me, the best way to build momentum and to start kind of attacking this task list in a way to get myself out of it is to think about tasks in four categories. It looks something like this. So first, I have energy level, high energy, low energy. That's just how much effort I need to put into the task. This could be creative energy, I guess, physical energy in some cases, and so on. The other piece is willpower. I need high willpower, probably because I hate the task or it's really, really hard and low willpower. If it's fun, if it's something that's kind of I can do mindlessly, maybe watch Netflix in the background kind of task. Those are kind of my four quadrants. Once I have those four quadrants in my mind, I'll usually pick one that feels best for the moment I'm in. If it's in the beginning of the day, I'll usually use high willpower, low energy. If it's later in the day, I might choose something with low willpower, but high energy, that's just kind of how my body and brain works. But one of these quadrants usually feels better to me than another on a day. And whichever quadrant I pick, I'm just going to scroll my task list till I find something that, to me, feels like that category, and I'm just going to go for it. My goal isn't to spend a lot of time organizing all these tasks. This is in my head. I'm not, you know, sitting in my ClickUp account reorganizing everything. I'm just thinking about this and then looking at my task list, grabbing the first thing I see that fits the category I'm interested in doing and going for it. By picking this category, I feel more in control, and it allows me to stop thinking about what to do and instead just say, all right, Layla, you're doing it. Boom. Once I do this, I'm able to take the task and start working on it, and hopefully I pick something small to start with. So I'm easily able to take that 100 overdue tasks and make it a 99, make it 98, make it 97. And that starts to help me build momentum, feel more positive encouragement. So if you are in a state of being behind, feeling pressure, feeling stressed about how exactly you can get your work done, these four tips I went through are the four I would go about doing to get myself out of that state of stress. Every step I talked about can overall be done in about 10 minutes. So an extended bathroom break or a walk around the block and coming back to your office 10 minutes is enough to usually regroup and then go after that momentum. Taking more than 10 minutes is going to hurt your chances at momentum and again, help you feel like you are beholden to the situation. So I really try to act swiftly when I'm in this moment. Calm down my body, and as soon as I'm back down to, like, a good mental state, dive in. Because momentum of starting some of those things, knowing which pieces I can actually start working on, that's going to make everything else feel better. So. So now that you've done one sprint of work, you've proven to yourself that this task list is not going to overwhelm you. You've got control over the situation. Take a quick pause here and do a little planning session. Maybe about 10 to 15 minutes. You can double this with a stretch break if you want. And what I want you to do during this stretch planning break is to just look ahead at the remaining task list. Be mindful here not to let yourself get stressed out, just like we did in step one. Remember, it's just a list of tasks. It needs to get done at some point. All right, breathe. In this moment, our goal is to replan this list based on how much we already got done. Okay, so in, say, those two hours you were just working in a good little sprint, how many tasks did you get done? 1, 3. Whatever the number is, look at the number that's remaining. If those numbers don't line up with the number of hours in the day, then we've got to start thinking a little bit proactively. Let's say we finished two tasks in one hour, and now we have 100 tasks left. Well, it's pretty realistic to assume we're not going to be able to finish all 100 tasks, assuming they're the same size as the two we just did. So we need to do a little planning here. We're going to look at the hundred remaining tasks, and we're going to start thinking, okay, if I were to plan the rest of today from scratch, which of these tasks are most important, highest priority to myself or my team that I really need to do today. Whatever those ones are, you want to grab them, that might be adding them to your Start adding them to your favorites, putting a little priority flag on them. I don't care. Whatever they are, identify them. Everything else, what I want you to do is view them as something that is nice to get done today but no longer required to finish today. So in this case I'm looking through and anything with a priority flag I want to make sure I accomplish. But everything else, it simply cannot be done today. I can't change the laws of time. These things will not be able to be finished today. So I'm going to start changing due dates to when I do think it'll be realistic to do that. I'm going to look at my work schedule for the upcoming week, look when I have some time, and then I'm going to move these tasks to the dates where I actually have time for the activity. When I change this date, regardless of what my team's policy is, I'm going to leave a comment on every single one explaining what's happening. For example, this might be a message I send. I'm going to tag whoever's a stakeholder or maybe my manager just to let them know that, hey, I I'm moving this because this is physically impossible to get done today. I think other things are higher priority. So I'm going to move this one to make room. If you think I need to shift around my priorities, get rid of something else to make sure this happens, that's awesome. Just let me know and I will reprioritize around that. But I'm doing my best based on what I know. So I'm going to just send this message, click send and wait for those responses. And once I click send, I'm going to go ahead and do this for every other task I'm rescheduling. I realize by doing this I am shifting my promise. I'm changing the expectation so. So there is a chance someone's going to respond and say, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, Layla. This task is so important because it's blocking me on 50 other things I need to do. I need to have it by tomorrow. Okay, if that happens, then we just flip it around. We say, all right, this one does need to get done today. The other one moves back. Doing this with your manager is a fantastic way to get this done really quickly. But messaging also works as long as you look out for those responses. As the day goes on, we'll Talk more about planning due dates in some of the later tips. But. But that is your final kind of reactive action that you have for this due dates period. Once you complete this and you're in a behind state, all you need to do is go back to tip number four and do that again, namely prioritize and take action. We don't want to spend a whole lot of time planning today. If we're behind, we need to go, go, go. And so these 10 minutes, resetting expectations, great. The 10 minutes previously, getting your brain and body in the right spot, great. Beyond that, action, action, action. Because we want to get action out of this hole as quickly as possible to make sure that no one's waiting on us for important work and isn't aware that we're holding things back. And by the way, managing deadlines, this kind of process we're talking about here is just one process you have in your professional toolkit. It's one process that, yeah, really matters for your team, the ability to get work done. But it's just one of them. And if you are thinking about, hmm, okay, how could I be this process oriented and have a plan of action for other areas where chaos is seeping into my day to day work? If you're curious about that at all, check out the video training I have in the description of this video. That video below will help you think through what your processes actually are. And once you know those, just like this one here, you can start optimizing those to be a better workflow for your needs, for your brain, for your team. So just a little tip, it's free training in the description of this video. Let's go back to the main stuff now. Tip number six is more proactive. And all of the remaining ones in this pile, these last three are all proactive, meaning if you're already behind, chill out right now, okay? You can't worry about these pieces right now. Just get yourself out of the mess and then come back to us. But for those of you thinking about the future, you're like, all right, whatever the situation is now, I just want to make sure this doesn't happen again. I've got three more bonus tips for you for how to proactively prevent these kinds of situations. The first tip in this category is tip number six, which I'm calling Build in Buffer. It's not a radical concept, but it is something that is challenging at times to enforce. Build a buffer just refers to always leaving blank space or flex time in your calendar. Some benchmarks I like to think about are 10% for a predictable task or routine, or 50% for an unpredictable project or task. What this means is if you know what to expect, you've done it maybe a dozen times. Aim closer to 10%, but if you've never even heard about this topic before, go closer to 50%. And if you are someone with personally more or less experience in the area that you're working in, you can also adjust this. If you've been, say, launching a website, it's predictable you've been doing it for 35 years. 10% might even be a little generous. Maybe you can go down to 5%. If you are a brand new professional building your very first website, you have no idea what it entails. Take this 50% up a notch, you might even go up to 100% buffer. And all this means is just how much free space you want to have. So, for example, if I have a one week project and I want a 50% buffer, I might say the project is going to take a week and a half. That gives me 50, 50% of just flex time. If I'm brand new doing a project for the first time and I want to do 100% buffer, I might say the project that I think will actually take one week actually takes two weeks. So I'm setting a generous expectation with buffer time built in. The right spot for you to be on this range will depend on your experience level, your ability to predict due dates just from again experience, but also just like how your brain works. And anywhere in this range is going to be a nice place to be. If you're not sure, aim to the high side. You know, 25% is a nice spot for just about anybody to get started. Oh, quick note from Layla in the past here. This whole section on buffer time is actually something I'm trying to implement at ProcessDriven right now. Institutionally, meaning we're trying to make a policy team wide to make this pretty much impossible to not do what we're trying. Oh, another sit break. What we're trying to do Is have a 20% buffer built into every single task we plan. And the way we're doing that is crazy simple, but I think it'll work. At the time of recording this video, we just implemented it. So by the time you watch this video, we should have been doing it for at least. Norman, please don't pee on me. Okay? We should have been doing it for at least a month, maybe two months by the time you watch this. So if you'd like an update on how that process is going for us. If you're considering adding buffer time company wide as a policy, I'm going to put a link to the LinkedIn post that I have on this topic. I'm going to be sharing in real time behind the scenes how this is working for us and how this isn't working. So follow me on LinkedIn. We can chat over there about like a real time discussion of how things are going. Just drop me a comment on that post which I'll have in the description and I'll give you an update just to hopefully help others who might be considering making buffer time a more team wide practice. What do you think Dorman? Will it be an utter failure? No. Maybe. I mean, I see a little tail wag. It could go either way, I guess. 50, 50 chances. But anyhow, let's go back here. Tip number seven our seventh tip for getting ahead of our deadlines is to treat deadlines as part of your identity. Add some weight to them that will ensure you plan them more accurately because you care about them more. In my view, I've chosen to make part of my identity the fact that I do not go back on my word. When I say I'm going to do something, I do it. If I say I'm going to show up to the gym, I will be there. If I say I'm going to be at a meeting, I I will be there. And this allows me to Whenever I set a due date, I think about is this something I really want to promise? Is this something that if I write it down, I really want to see every day? It forces me to think, you know, is this a deadline? I'm about to write down something that truly makes sense by having this as part of my identity, by putting a lot of weight on myself to meet my promises when I set a deadline or I tell somebody, yeah, I'll be there. I understand the weight of that. When someone asks me, hey Layla, do you want to go to the gym at 5am? And I say, yes, I'll be there. I mean, I will be there. And I am only making that promise when I realize, like, I have to do this. If I say I'm going to do this. And that's because it's all part of my identity. If I choose to not make this part of my identity, if I just say, meh, you know, I say things, but it might not happen. If I'm like most millennials, if I can just dig on us and flake out and I'm just like, eh, I'll Decide the day of, we'll play it by ear. I'm not making a big commitment. I might say, yeah, I'll be there probably. But it's not the same way to saying, hey, when I say something, it has value to me because I say it does to me. And so I'm going to take the commitment more seriously when it comes up, whether that's a deadline or meeting someone at the gym early in the morning. Now, tip number eight is a very simple one, but essentially when things go wrong with your identity or with your process or with your deadlines, learn from them. This is tip number eight. It's a really simple one. It's actually one we talk about More detail up here if you want it from more of the business process perspective. But all this is is making sure you have a process for taking action based on mistakes. For example, let's say I never have meetings on Friday and some Friday I had a meeting, I just didn't see it and I missed the meeting. This actually happened to me. I felt so terrible, I felt so bad and that experience was a mistake. Something went wrong. But to follow this tip, instead of just beating myself up or beating myself up at all, what I need to take from that experience is a corrective action. In this case, when I missed that Friday meeting, ugh, I changed my calendar. I made sure that I was not able to be scheduled for any meetings on Friday. I even put a blocker on my calendar to make sure it couldn't happen again. Another example might be maybe you made the promise to meet at the gym at 5am and you slept in through your alarm. In that case, my corrective action might be setting up a second alarm, my phone as well as a, you know, an old analog clock. Whatever my options are, taking a proactive action is the tip here. You want to do this generally instead of just beating yourself up because beating yourself up is just going to smush you down. It might feel better in some sense, but it's not actually fixing anything. Instead, with this tip, use the energy that you would use to just beat yourself up and use it towards making the future better. Your future self will thank you for it and it's just a lot nicer to yourself. Hey Laila from the past future here. And I want to add a little warning about this next section. This is an unpopular opinion and it's probably one that will for some people be quite upsetting because it is definitely not in line with what's popular right now. And you know, everyone's all about this work from home on a laptop life. And I honestly just don't think that's good for many people, many types of people. It's not going to be helpful to you. And so if this section upsets you, that's cool, that's fine. Leave a comment below I may not agree with your opinion, but I'd love to hear it. But my hope is if I can get one person or one employer from having a bad employee employer relationship just based on this fundamental incompatibility, then this section will have been worth it. So trigger warning I guess. Back to the video. Some people might get angry at me for sharing this, but my ninth tip is if you find all of these steps above feel like a lot, they're a big jump. The absolute best way you can get better at any of this is to get a different job. I know unpopular opinion, but there are certain jobs that are going to help you build this skill a lot better than others. I think intuitively, especially as Americans, we really crave autonomy in our work. But the more autonomy you have in your workplace, the harder it will be to build the skills I'm talking about. To continue with the gym metaphor I seem to be using today, think about this stuff, this process of managing your commitments as running. Okay, if you're struggling to run at a slow speed, you just can't get your deadlines met, you always feel a little overwhelmed. If you work in an autonomous work environment, somewhere, like somewhere that's remote, autonomous, maybe you work at different time zones, asynchronous. Any of those things that's like being on the treadmill and cranking the speed all the way up to 10, just okay, if you're struggling to do this on your own and you crank it up to 10, you will die. Okay, you might not actually die, but that's going to be a bad situation. Instead of that situation of setting yourself up for failure. My suggestion is if you really want to master this skill, get help. Get paid to master this skill by working in a workplace that builds this skill with you working in an in person synchronous, meaning you're working at the same time job. I know people don't like these anymore. They're not popular for some reason. Working a traditional job with a workplace that you're working with other people where your manager is alongside you physically in the room where there's a direct way to measure whether or not work is done on time, such as you know, are the packages shipped, is the cabinet made? Whatever those physical workplaces are, that is Going to build this skill for you. It's kind of like being on the treadmill and just turning it up one notch at a time. Just, okay, a little bit faster, a little bit faster, a little bit faster. Whether you choose to stay in an in person, synchronous work environment or shift afterwards, I really think getting that kind of job experience is the fastest way to build this skill. It's not going to feel good, never feels good to grow. It's supposed to be uncomfortable, but by the end of that time, you're going to have the skillset and you will have gotten paid to build that skill set by working that traditional work workplace. Sorry for going in the tirade. I just, I've seen so many people go right into a remote job because it's popular right now and just completely get their ass handed to them because they're not prepared with the professionalism and just the experience to know. How does one manage oneself? Managing oneself is a skill set that needs to be built. And learning that while remote and asynchronous and away from your manager is really, really hard. And it's going to be easy to blame everybody else, but anyway, that's why I'm a big proponent for traditional jobs, especially for early stage people in their career, or anyone who didn't build this skill set naturally during high school or college or whatever else, because it is a skill and it's a hard skill to learn on the job when you don't have anybody else on your side physically. And just a reminder, everything we just talked about is just one process, a personal, professional, one for making sure you're able to make good on your promises, to fulfill your commitments. It's one process that we will all need to learn and get better at over time. We're all going to make mistakes with it. And once you recognize that this is just a process, a skill that you can build by following certain steps, it all becomes so much easier. But managing your commitments is only one process we have as professionals, particularly if you are a knowledge worker working on a computer for a living. It's just one. There are so many other processes in your business, in your operation, in your nonprofit, that you could be optimizing in this same way, both for yourself individually or for your entire team. And when you start thinking about and optimizing these processes, not just treating them as defaults, you're supposed to just know. All of a sudden, having your work feel more manageable, less stressful, more in control, less overwhelming. See how we're looping this all together. It's so much easier to do because you're thinking about things intentionally and designing a way of approaching it that works for brain, your business, your team. And again, you can learn more about this process skillset that I just find so powerful for lean teams by watching the webinar in the description of this video. It's completely free and it kind of introduces you to this skill set so you have some basic frameworks you can start applying in your team tomorrow. Check that out in the description below, if you haven't already. Oh, and a quick reminder if you enjoyed this video, check out this one next for some practical tactics of how to improve any process beyond just how you manage those deadlines. Until next time, enjoy the process.
