“We live in a culture that is constantly amping us up with stress and stimulation.” — Johann Hari
When everything feels important but overwhelming, how do you know what’s enough?
Overwhelm isn’t always about having objectively too much to do. Sometimes it develops in the way we respond to responsibility itself. We may struggle to organize competing demands, have trouble getting started until something becomes urgent, push ourselves to finish long after we’re depleted, or carry an internal sense that there is always one more thing we should be doing.
Some of us compensate by becoming incredibly capable. We overfunction, anticipate what needs to happen next, hold ourselves to high standards, and learn how to get a remarkable amount done. From the outside, that can look like competence. Internally, it can feel like constantly running calculations about what needs attention, what might fall apart, and whether we’ve done enough yet.
Over time, that way of moving through life can become exhausting. Burnout isn’t necessarily a failure to handle responsibility; sometimes it develops because we have become exceptionally practiced at handling responsibility without noticing—or trusting—our own limits.
What can you do when it feels like everything is competing for your attention?
There is always more that could be done: more emails to answer, things to remember, decisions to make, people to respond to, and loose ends to close. When your attention is being pulled in too many directions, even ordinary responsibilities can start feeling surprisingly difficult to organize and complete.
We often respond by trying harder. Better lists. Better systems. More urgency. More switching between tasks. But as Oliver Burkeman argues in Four Thousand Weeks, there will always be more worth doing than a finite person has time to do. Johann Hari’s work adds another layer: our attention is also shaped by stress, constant stimulation, disrupted rest, and environments that keep asking us to stay perpetually available.
Eventually the question has to shift from How do I get all of this done? to What actually deserves my limited attention, energy, and time?
What overwhelm & burnout can look like →
Stress and burnout often build long before anything visibly falls apart. They show up in how you use your attention, respond to responsibility, recover from effort, and relate to the growing list of things that still need something from you.
Exhaustion that rest doesn’t fully fix
Feeling physically or emotionally depleted even after sleeping, taking time off, or trying to recharge.
Difficulty disengaging
Continuing to mentally track responsibilities, unfinished tasks, or what needs to happen next even when nothing requires your attention right now.
Over-responsibility
Feeling like too much depends on you, struggling to delegate, or assuming that if you stop holding everything together, something important will fall apart.
Distractibility and difficulty prioritizing
Finding it hard to stay with one task when multiple things are competing for your attention, or spending so much energy deciding what to do first that getting started becomes harder.
Rest that comes with guilt
Finding it difficult to slow down without feeling behind, irresponsible, lazy, or preoccupied with what you could be doing instead.
Irritability and a shorter fuse
Having less patience, becoming frustrated more easily, or feeling disproportionately reactive to ordinary demands.
What we can work toward →
The goal isn’t to become perfectly efficient or never feel overwhelmed again. It’s to build a way of responding to responsibility that is more sustainable, more intentional, and less dependent on urgency, overfunctioning, or pushing past your limits.
More sustainable effort
Meeting responsibilities without repeatedly spending more energy than you can realistically replenish.
Better recovery
Learning what genuinely restores you rather than treating rest as whatever is left after everything else gets done.
More flexibility around responsibility
Loosening the sense that you always need to be the capable one, the helpful one, or the person who keeps everything moving.
More room for what matters
Reclaiming attention, time, and energy for relationships, interests, play, meaning, and the parts of life that make all the effort worth it.
More follow-through with less urgency
Building ways to start, organize, and complete tasks without needing pressure or last-minute intensity to create momentum.
Clearer priorities
Getting better at deciding what actually needs your attention now, what can wait, and what does not deserve the same level of urgency.
How I approach this work
We’ll look at both the demands themselves and the patterns that have developed around them: how you prioritize, what helps you start, where urgency takes over, what you carry because it feels easier than delegating, and what happens when you finally stop. From there, the work can involve building more flexible systems, clarifying what actually matters, experimenting with different ways of using attention and energy, and loosening the beliefs or stress responses that keep responsibility feeling so loaded. I draw from ACT, Positive Psychology, EMDR, DBR, and practical behavior-change strategies depending on what seems to be keeping the pattern in place.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT can help clarify what genuinely matters, notice when obligation or avoidance is driving your choices, and make more intentional decisions about where your time and energy go.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR may be useful when we identify that present-day stress is being driven by earlier experiences that shaped your relationship with failure, responsibility, drive, criticism, rejection, or the belief that you have to keep performing in order to be okay.
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR)
DBR may be helpful when stress responses feel especially automatic or body-based. We can work with present-day moments of activation to slow the response down, notice what happens underneath it, and build greater tolerance for those shifts.
Positive Psychology
Positive Psychology helps us look beyond simply reducing demands and ask what actually helps you feel replenished and engaged: connection, meaning, strengths, accomplishment, play, and experiences that give something back to you.
Ready for life to feel more sustainable?
You don’t have to wait until you’re completely depleted to take burnout seriously. We can look at what’s demanding the most from you, what keeps pulling you back into urgency or overfunctioning, and what would need to change for your time, energy, and attention to feel more sustainable.