6 Practical Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed at Work

Negotiate What You’ll Tolerate in Your Career—and What You Won’t

Have you ever had a moment where the constant ringing or pinging of your phone makes you want to toss it out the window?

The pressures of a demanding job are stressful enough during “normal” times. Compounded with the challenges of a pandemic that has disproportionately impacted women, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning with no rescue in sight.

Boundaries between work and home life are more blurred than ever, with many women working and living in the same space. And when you’re hooked into work every moment of the day (and night), the demands of email, Zooms, phone calls, and Slack are a never-ending burden.

Constrictive Gender Norms Pressure Women to “Do It All”

Women tend to accept the inevitability of impossible deadlines and a mounting to-do list, weighed down in part by the old, sexist mantra that a woman must work twice as hard as a man to achieve the same recognition and respect. We’ve been conditioned to do everything: from working a full-time job to running the house to looking after the kids.

While it can feel like a badge of honor to keep all those balls in the air, your beliefs may be holding you back from setting reasonable expectations for your workload. That’s right: the first step in dealing with overwhelm at work isn’t to cut your hours, ask for more time off, or ask your manager to revise your job description. Those asks can be an extremely important part of your plan to negotiate what you’ll tolerate in your career, but the first negotiation you need to have is with yourself.

Renegotiating Your Mindset About Your Career

I’ve written a whole series about negotiating your mindset, and how your negotiation with yourself is truly the most important one you’ll ever have. Before you can go to your employer, or your clients, and ask to make a change in your relationship with them, you need to understand what it is that you really want.

In other words, what are you willing to tolerate at work? Are you willing to work weekends so you have flexibility during the week to go to your favorite yoga class? Are you willing to take early morning calls as long as you can pick your kid up from daycare by 3 pm? Are you willing to spend 20% of your time on administrative tasks that bog you down as long as 80% of your time is spent doing fulfilling work you really love? The answers will be different for everyone.

I’d also invite you to consider what you won’t tolerate: more work than you can reasonably handle, unrealistic expectations about deadlines, colleagues and managers who don’t treat you respectfully.

And finally, bring your negotiation back to how you treat yourself. Can you give yourself permission to not say yes to every request you get from your team? To be less than 100% polished and prepared every now and then? If so, you’re in the right headspace to take tactical steps toward negotiating a work life that’s less stressful and more enjoyable.