What I Do First When Business Feels Like Too Much
The pressure of a new year can make running your business overwhelming as f*ck, but let’s be honest, that’s not just a new year thing because running a business can feel a bit too much at any time of the year. Here’s the things I do when I notice that overwhelmed, it’s all too much feeling start to creep in.
Take a deep breath
Before I touch anything I like to stop and take a breath. Everything feels like a bit much when you haven’t stopped or given your brain a moment to pause. Whether you take 5 minutes to journal, go for a walk or literally just step away from your desk and do 5 deep breaths, the power of pausing is huge when you’re spiralling.
Get back in touch with your why
I would put money on the fact you didn’t set your business up for 3am panics and a midafternoon cry. Think about why you set your business up, what’s your purpose? What’s the overarching goal? Who and what are you doing it all for? Now you’ve put things into perspective, let’s start looking at the practical things you can do to bring it down a level.
Review your to do list
We are all guilty of letting our to do list’s get as long as our supermarket receipt after a big Christmas food shop - it happens. If you find you’re constantly moving tasks from one day to the next and never actually getting it all done, now is the time to review your list. Whether you're a high tech whiz or maybe you’re a pen and paper girl, get that to do list in front of you and see what’s on there vs what you actually need to do. You can grab some highlighters and colour code in levels of importance or add numbers to assign priority levels, whatever works for you but make sure you’re honest with yourself. There’s going to be things on there that are actually genuinely important because a client is waiting on them or if you don’t send that invoice you won’t get paid, and there’s also going to be things that either the time has passed or it was never that important anyway. Colour coding all of your files would be lovely but for now, it can definitely come off the list. Likewise those million, middle of the night reel ideas - move them to a different list for when you have time to create, they don’t need to be on your main to do list. Remove everything that’s not important and start again with concise, prioritised to do list.
As well as reviewing your existing to do list, now is definitely the time to think about whether your system is working. If you have 5 different lists with 10 things on each, no wonder you can’t get through them all in a day and you feel like you’re drowning. Think about what format works best for you, and if you’re not sure, try something different to what you have because clearly that isn’t working right now.
Make your marketing lighter
Pretty much everyone I speak to feels overwhelmed by their marketing. It’s a lot, there are a lot of platforms and a lot of different ways of marketing and ‘rules’ about how to do it and what works and when to post and I feel overwhelmed just writing this! If it’s all feeling too much, there are no rules to say you can’t strip it back. Choose one or two platforms to focus your energy on, pick the one you enjoy the most and the one that performs the best in terms of getting leads or clients. Then think about what you’re posting and how often, if you’re posting every day because you think that’s the only way to be seen, stop that straight away because it’s a sure fire why to feel totally overwhelmed. If you’re more strategic in thinking about what you’re posting and who you’re posting it for, you can slow it down to 2-3 posts a week and still get the same engagement levels.
Set some Clear boundaries
This is another one that comes up time and time again when I speak to clients. They’re overwhelmed because suddenly they’re finding themselves answering work messages at 11pm, creating content on a Sunday when they just want to be with their family and panicking that they haven’t replied to that enquiry that came in 2 hours ago.
Setting yourself clear boundaries is one of the biggest game changers. Think about the last time you messaged a business, were you expecting an immediate response to the message you sent at 9pm on a Sunday evening? For most people, of course you weren’t - and your clients and enquiries aren’t either! You’re allowed to wait and respond on Monday, you’re allowed to turn your notifications off (as long as you get back to people in a reasonable time frame and don’t ignore them completely!) The only person telling you that you have to make that Instagram post on the weekend is you.
If you’re worried that clients won’t wait for your response, there are a few ways you can manage their expectations:
Set up an auto response telling people your working days so they know when to expect a reply
Have a bank of template responses so you can quickly respond to people (within your working hours)
Set up an enquiry form which gathers all the information you need to reduce back and forth and allow you to quickly and easily respond (within your working hours)
ask for help
It doesn’t matter if you outsource the tasks that feel the most overwhelming, join a membership or group that helps you feel grounded or just voice note a business pal who gets it. The important bit is asking for help and remembering that you don’t have to carry everything alone. Feeling supported, in whatever capacity is right for you, is often a the way people are able to breakthrough from overwhelmed to calm and spacious.
So in summary, if you’re feeling overwhelmed with business right now, you’re not alone. Business can be a lot, but we also overcomplicate it a lot too. Strip it back, let it be simple, even if it doesn’t feel easy to do that. Let your business work with you, not be the thing that keeps you up every night and, always, ask for help. You’ll be surprised how many people feel like they’re in the same boat as you.
If you’re looking for some support, someone who’s got your back but will also be totally upfront and honest with you, book a free, no pressure discovery call and let’s chat about how we could work together in 2026.
