… or are we? What is overwhelm, and how can we take action amidst the stormgainst .

Recently, it’s been one of those periods in life where I’ve had more to do each day than any one person could possibly manage. Throw on top of that a move this weekend, and I really started to feel the pressure.

Talking to my friends, it seems to be a common sentiment going around.

There are few things in life that I feel qualified to give advice on. However, in my not so humble opinion, one of my greatest strengths lies in standing tall against overwhelming odds. To face uncertainty and overwhelm unblinkingly; and when I inevitably fall, to repeatedly get back up.

Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside. Marcus Aurelius 

About 10 years ago, I got really into Stoicism. I would say it’s something I consciously practiced for years. While it’s not something I do anymore, I am grateful for that time because in times like these, ancient wisdom can be priceless.

Because the thing is: overwhelm is an aspect of life, not a state of being. There is always more we can be doing, and that only is accelerating in modernity. The goal should not be to avoid overwhelm, but to become unbothered by the idea. 

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Epictetus 

One of the core principles in stoicism is that life is binary: there are things in your control, and there are things out of your control. 

We’re hard wired to worry about things that are not under our control. They feel inescapable, overwhelming, infuriating, and at times down-right unfair. Our monkey brains fixate on these things, and cloud our judgement.

However, it is precisely the focus on the things that we cannot control that does us the most harm. 

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. Seneca

By definition, any time spent fretting about things outside our control are futile. There is nothing to be done about them except let them poison your well. We stress ourselves, aggravate ourselves, and destroy ourselves, spending countless CPU cycles running through the same thoughts. 

And for what? At the end of the day, these things were never in our control. There was never anything that we could have done about them.

One experience I have found true throughout my whole life is how much people underestimate themselves. Almost universally, I see people respond to overwhelm with I can’t do that, or even more nefarious, I will never be able to do that. There’s nothing I can do. Things won’t bet better.

But this is almost always coming from a focus on things we cannot change. We are all far more capable than we realize, we just need to focus on the things that we can take action on.

How much better would things be if instead, we focused on those things we can control?

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater. Marcus Aurelius

Yet again, I find myself at a crossroads. My habits are decimated, my routine destroyed, my momentum stopped in its tracks. Work keeps piling up though, and with each passing day, I only have even more to do.

I find myself able and willing to work, and I sit down, but there is so much to do I don’t even know where to begin.

I’ve always found, when life get’s this way, that by trying to do less I end up doing more. Don’t try to cross an item off your list; try instead to just start the task.

• Don’t try to sit down and code for 6 hours trying to get an entire feature done; try to sit down for 20 minutes and just see how you would implement the feature.

• Don’t try to get everything ready; try to sit down and refresh yourself on what needs to be done.

• Don’t try to get your whole life in order; try instead to do one small thing that moves the needle in the right direction.

Most of the time, as soon as I am in motion, I don’t want to stop. The hardest part is getting in motion. We paralyze ourselves by pressuring us to commit to a marathon every time we want to start. 

Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing. Seneca

A lot of these are just pretty words, but they don’t always make things easier. There is nothing that can be said, read, or thought that will make things easier.

However, we can simplify things. We can put things in boxes. We can break things down. 

We can control our thoughts, and focus on those things we can control.

And we can always take one step, no matter how small.