Overwhelmed at Work? 5 Achievable Steps to Prioritize Business Tasks for 2025

Feeling overwhelmed at work? You are not alone! When you run a busy business, chances are you hear the word “overwhelmed” either from your team or coming out of your own mouth on a regular basis. The fact of the matter is “overwhelm” is more of a mental state of being surrounding the anxiety about tasks. The good news is that with a level of awareness of overwhelm you can now map a plan for your daunting workload and feel better about the order in which you can balance your to-do list. 
 
So before overwhelming workloads impact your personal life, create health issues, or inundate your professional life, take these actionable steps to reach your achievable goals.

#1: Start a Brain Dump.

This may sound crazy but to address being overwhelmed at work sit down and do a brain dump. This gives the brain permission to release all the various thoughts running in your head, and to break it down into a way that makes sense.  

Think of it this way, you have dozens of ideas and projects running through your head at any given time. Hopefully at least a few of these have been delegated to others, but you may still have periods of time where even those delegated tasks trouble you as they are still “open loops” until someone puts closure on the project.  

Other thoughts may range from single tasks to large projects. They may range from mere idea to full blow ventures that are underway. 

Bottom line, a key to conquering the negative feelings of being overwhelmed at work is to get all these projects down onto a task list so you can start prioritizing them. 

#2: Start Prioritizing Your Key Tasks.

While there is likely a constant stream of things that you feel need to be done, it is vital that you take inventory and prioritize the things that are the most important that you need to get done first. 

For many business owners, the top tasks may be related to cash flow and getting money in the door. Whether that’s collecting on accounts receivable or getting new clients in the door, it’s vital to stay focused on these tasks as cash flow is king. For others that are doing great but feeling overwhelmed at work because there is so much going on, the top tasks may be related to building systems and delegating to your team or vendors.  

The following concrete steps can help a business owner prioritize your top tasks. 

First, Be Consistent with Marketing If You Want to Grow.

Vital to each business is the need to make sure there’s always a stream of clients coming in the door that will allow us the opportunity to service our clients. Set realistic goals with simple tasks that you and your team can do on a regular basis. Newsletters and phone calls help you cultivate relationships with your audience. Articles and blogs create valuable content and increase your presence and authority online. Social media and videos give visual clues and reminders to your audience so they maintain top of mind awareness. 

What is key here is to start with just a few small items and then consistently build that platform.  For instance, I started with one video a week when I started my business. Our YouTube channel now gets over 130 hours a month of view time. (want to check it out, here is our #1 most viewed video on How to Write Policies and Procedures!)

Second, Focus on Sales to Control Cash Flow.

If you are not signing up clients or additional business, your business is likely struggling. Consistent sales is a fundamental to the health of a business. If sales come in like ocean waves, it is likely creating difficult emotions on your team, and elevated stress and feelings of burnout to the owner. 

Review the to do task list you documented above and identify all the tasks related with Sales and converting clients in to being great customers. While you don’t need to do each of those tasks, delegating these are vital to the business and to creating a healthy balance of tasks you need to do and what can be delegated off your plate.  

Third, Ensure You Get Paid!

Running a stable, profitable business means being a good money manager. Financials are a key area of many negative emotions and yet they can be eradicated by having simple tasks that ensure the checks and balances of getting paid.  

This is again an area where the Owner does not need to be doing all of the work, but it is important to delegate these tasks and ensure they get performed. 

Fourth, Establish a Team to Service Clients and Take Good Care of Them.

Your team is another essential element of running a successful business and that means being in front of worker burnout by being clear with your job descriptions, task lists and keeping a healthy eye on potential workplace stress. Your team will take care of your customers and make your business a place worth working. Prioritize Team culture and your business will flourish.

#3: Delegate with Confidence.

All too often, “delegation” is sorely confused with abdication and the “hire and hope the other person know what to do” method. If you want to ensure results, then you need to learn to delegate properly and ensure your team delegates properly. If you hear words like “I don’t know what to do,” “I didn’t hit the deadline because I was waiting for all the information,” or “no one told me that”. These are all good indications that you and your entire team would benefit from a training on delegation and project management.  

A key element of overcoming being overwhelmed at work is effective time management Effective time management is a result of setting time to do things, but also knowing what needs to be done. If a person doesn’t understand the tasks they are given, this means the project won’t likely move forward and stacks up with all the other tasks that are not being completed. 

Developing strong delegation skills means being clear in your own mind on the project, carefully selecting who will manage the project, providing clarity on all elements of the project including end results and deadlines, and then following up after to give feedback.

#4: Project Management is Key

A common fear that happens with many Entrepreneurs is that while they may be able to delegate some smaller tasks, they feel they must manage every large project because they are not accustomed to a team providing updates and managing the project on their own. This is where it is imperative for the CEO and COO to develop self-managers and leaders in each department. A key to this is teaching everyone on the team proper project management skills. This allows the team to have a framework for success and to drive results with concrete steps known to everyone.

So what is project management? In the most simple meaning, it is having a framework upon which the team can work to reach an end goal. Regardless of if the project is a marketing project, an admin project or a client project, the framework remains the same. There is an ideation phase where you contemplate what the project might look like. Then there is a true planning phase where the idea becomes a real project and time frames, deadlines and task assignments come to fruition. Then there is the execution of the project which may or may not be broken down into phases depending on the size. Finally, there is the Debrief and Feedback phase. That is one of the most important as that is when the team can learn and grow.  

A key element related to being overwhelmed at work is that the project management framework provides a structure upon which the team can outline next steps and break tasks into realistic goals. 

Take time to train your team on proper project management and you will be able to delegate and know that it will get done without YOU having to do all of it.  

#5: Build and Implement Systems for Lasting Success

While getting a few things off your plate today may be great, the key to long term success of a business and ensuring that we kick ‘overwhelm’ to the curb is all about building and implementing systems that will last long term.  These may be part of your short-term goals or part of your long-term goals but bottom line, the companies we see thriving are the ones with systems in place. 

So, what is a system?  Systems are the compilation of Policies (why are we doing this), Procedures (step by step instructions on how to do this), examples, templates, illustrations, diagrams, videos, scripts, workflows and checklists. These elements together support all different learning styles to give clarity to how the process works and ensures the staffer can do it with confidence.  

If you want help training your team on How to Build Systems, check out our Path to Systems Package. 

Bottom line, most businesses need to more clearly document what they want done and how they want their team to get it done. This allows teams to take ownership of projects and work with confidence.  
 
Overall, feeling overwhelmed at work most often stems from lack of clarity on how to ask for help and be confident that things can get done without the need for us to do everything ourselves.

Want help honing your skills of delegation and project management? We have additional resources to support you!  From our Systems Packages to streamline each department so your team knows what to do, to our workshops to help you and your team learn to communicate with confidence and delegate to drive results, we have you covered.  Check out our Systems Packages by clicking here or get signed up for our Delegation and Project Management Workshop by clicking here.