Hello and welcome to this episode of the Drink Less, Live Better podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Williamson. Be sure to follow me on Instagram at drinklesslivebetter and head to the website drinklesslivebetter.com, where you can sign up for the five-day Drink Less Experiment, download my free habit tracker, and join my email club for regular inspiration, ideas, and resources to help you live better.
Life might be full and fast for you, and if you want that, then great, I love that for you. But if you want quieter and slower, then listen up, buttercup. Overcoming overwhelm is today's subject. There's more information, more responsibility, more expectation, and somehow less space to process any of it. More people wake up already feeling behind before the day has even begun. And if that's you, I want to say this clearlyright at the beginning: overwhelm is common, and it's not a personal failure.
One of the most helpful ways to understand overwhelm comes from something called cognitive load theory. Our brains have limited capacity. We can only hold and process so much at once. Overwhelm happens when the demands placed on us exceed our capacity, not because we're weak, disorganized, or bad at life, but because the environment we're operating in is actually asking too much of us. So this episode isn't about fixing yourself or getting your stuff together. It's about understanding what's actually going on for you.
There's a model often called the stress bucket. Imagine your bucket is already quite full. When more and more small drops are added, it doesn't take much before it spills over. That spill is overwhelm. And when your bucket is already full, even tiny things can feel like too much. Research into chronic stress shows that when we're under sustained load, our executive function is reduced. Decision-making becomes harder. We experience decision fatigue. Overwhelm isn't a mindset problem. It's a physiological response to carrying far too much for far too long.
Another reason overwhelm feels so heavy is that much of its weight is invisible. We're often juggling too many roles at once: work self, parent self, partner self, carer self, organizer self, emotional support person, household manager, all running simultaneously. This is known as role strain, and it's particularly intense when emotional and cognitive labor isn't acknowledged. Planning, remembering, anticipating, worrying, holding things together—so often this is where we feel the most overwhelmed because so much of this is unseen and unshared.
Then there's the tool many of us rely on to cope. Ah, yes, the to-do list. And this might surprise you, but to-do lists can actually make overwhelm worse. Lists, lists tend to grow faster than they shrink. Everything on them starts to feel equallyurgent, and they rarely take energy or capacity into account. There's something called the Zeigarnik effect, which shows that unfinished tasks stay mentally active in our minds. So even when you're organized, your brain is still buzzing with open loops. That background hum is stress. That's why you can feel tense even when you're ticking things off your list as you go.
A more helpful shift, perhaps, is moving from endless to-do lists to intentional priorities. Not everything deserves equal attention. Urgency is not the same as importance. And having choice about where your energy goes can create a bit of relief. A simple framework is Eisenhower's Matrix, which helps you to sort tasks into what'surgent and important, important but noturgent,urgent but not important, and neither. When people do this honestly, they often realize how much of their time and energy is going intourgent but low-value tasks, often for other people. And that is knackering.
Another big contributor to overwhelm is planning based on fantasy rather than reality. Time is fixed, but energy is not. Yet most planning assumes we'll feel motivated, focused, and capable all day long. That is really true. Energy-based planning is far more compassionate and effective. Instead of just scheduling tasks by time, you map them against high, medium, or low energy. Research into self-regulation shows that overestimating capacity increases stress and reduces follow-through. Planning for reality, not best-case scenarios, actually builds a bit of trust with yourself.
And finally, we come to how we design our days. A day with no margin will always feel overwhelming, no matter how efficient it looks. White space in your diary isn't wasted. It's functional. Transitions need time. Flow will always be perfection. Instead of rigid routines, think in terms of rhythm: anchors to start and end the day, buffers between tasks, flex points that allow life to happen without everything collapsing. It's about creating days that can breathe a bit.
Overwhelm is information. It is your system giving you feedback, and small design changes really will help you out. Instead of asking, "How do I cope with all of this?" a more powerful question might be, "What needs to change for me?" Because the goal isn't to survive your life. It's to build a life that you don't need to escape from.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Drink Less, Live Better podcast. If you enjoyed it, please share it with someone who might need a little extra compassion today. And don't forget to follow me on Instagram at drinklesslivebetter. Visit drinklesslivebetter.com for more tools and inspiration. Check out the show notes for a link to a hidden podcast episode that will help you with your 5:00 PM cravings and details about my one-to-one life coaching and sober coaching programs. And P.S. I believe in you.
