There’s nothing wrong with pushing yourself to achieve more than you initially thought you could. Pushing ourselves helps us grow and learn as people. But there comes a point where it’s no longer just pushing and is instead a serious time management issue.

Toeing the line between productively busy and overbooked is difficult. Because each individual has a different reaction to stress, what might be fine for one person might be an extreme reach for another. 

Generally, you are trying to accomplish too much if the number or scale of your commitments is causing issues with your day-to-day functioning. If you’re exhausted, frustrated, and anxious, you are trying to accomplish too much, and you need to take some time to reorganize and get back on top of your schedule.

But this description for knowing when you’ve hit your limit is very vague. How exactly can you tell if you’re trying to accomplish too much? And once you know, what are your options to manage your commitments and fix the problem?

Stress Responses from Trying to Accomplish Too Much

Trying to accomplish too many things in too short of a timeframe can mean you feel mentally and physically exhausted, become irritated or upset more quickly than usual, and feel overwhelmed by the number of things you need to accomplish, as you don’t have enough time or energy to devote to doing each thing thoroughly and well.

Burnout and What Causes It

The name psychologists give to this state of being overwhelmed and overstressed is burnout. Burnout is described by Psychology Today as “a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.” While taking on too many tasks and working in too many long stretches without enough breaks does contribute, burnout is also heavily influenced by your sense of control over the tasks you have and by the kinds of tasks they are.

With tasks from jobs especially, it can often feel as if you have little or no control over how and when you approach a task and complete it, meaning that you can end up working in a way that makes the job more difficult than it needs to be for you or without enough time to finish it to the degree or standard you would prefer to. 

There may also be tasks that you are asked to complete that conflict with your personal views. This dissonance can add to the stress that eventually leads to you feeling burned out.

Work isn’t the only thing that can cause burnout, however. Our relationships and responsibilities can also cause it. Parents especially are prone to burnout, and this is doubly true for single parents. I’m not one, I can only assume, but I’d imagine – on top of the daily stress that raising a child incurs, a single parent has to deal with the stress and stigmas surrounding their situation.

This can make it so that they feel as if they have to hide the struggles that they are facing so that they don’t receive unwanted attention or judgment, which can make it even more stressful.

Burnout Versus Stress

While too much stress causes burnout, the two conditions aren’t the same thing at all. Stress is defined as a sense of pressure and your body’s response to those situations. 

Stress will often feel like too much. It is a very physical response, meaning that you are over-engaged in everything that you do, and may feel that everything is urgent or dire. You might feel restless and hyperactive and jump to conclusions more easily. Like in my personal case, stress can lead to the development of anxiety disorders if left unmanaged, but it’s also a part of everyday life in smaller quantities.

Burnout, on the other hand, is what happens when you let your stress levels go unchecked for too long, and they build up. You may feel a deep sense of “not enough” in that you feel as if you as a person aren’t enough to deal with something.

You might also feel as if you don’t have enough motivation to make the tasks that you’re working on feel worthwhile. The key difference is that burnout is depressive rather than overstimulating; you run out of steam after running at full pace for too long.

If you are incredibly stressed out, you are experiencing too much of everything that can make you feel like there isn’t enough room to think, and there isn’t enough reward for doing it anyway.

Whatever the cause, burnout can cause major problems if you let it get out of control for too long.

Sure, Burn out may be a common and frequent problem for EVERYONE, but that doesn’t make it any less serious and important to catch and fix as quickly as possible.

When things get out of control, it’s very easy for them to snowball into something so big that they appear nearly impossible to deal with. So it’s best to pay attention when something seems off, because it often is.

Signs That You are Trying to Accomplish Too Much

The American Genius points to these eight signs that you are experiencing burnout:

1. You are experiencing new health problems. Maybe you have gained or lost a significant amount of weight, or you notice new aches and pains in your body. A very telling health problem related to burnout is having noticeably more frequent or intense headaches.
2. You’re eating more junk food than usual, or not eating at all. Changes in your diet are a major indicator that your stress levels are too high. This can mean either stress-eating comforting foods with very little health benefit or not feeling hungry at all, perhaps even feeling too nauseous to eat.
3. You’re visibly tired, to the point that people are commenting on it. Stress can lead to issues with sleep, meaning that your body isn’t getting enough rest to function properly. You may have dark circles under your eyes, your eyes may appear dull, and your skin may appear paler than usual.
4. You’re more prone to arguing about small things. This also relates to a lack of sleep (or it’s quality!) and proper rest, as that can make you more aggressive, uncooperative and worsen your health.
5. You’re more irritable about things that wouldn’t normally bother you, like heavy traffic or misplaced belongings. As above, a lack of sleep can mean that you are prone to outbursts even if you are normally a very quiet or calm person.
6. You’re having trouble keeping up with important deadlines. Either you have multiple things due on or to do on a certain day, and there are physically are not enough hours in a day to complete these tasks, or you are swapping your due dates around accidentally and end up working on a much shorter schedule than you originally anticipated, which can compound your stress even more.
7. You’re having trouble sticking to your schedule in general and tend to run late. Because you are having trouble meeting deadlines, your schedule may be suffering. Working too late on one project can mean you don’t have enough time to start another one, or that you don’t arrive at an event when you needed to.
8. You find yourself constantly without time to do things that would normally make you feel better, such as exercising or participating in your hobbies. When you try to accomplish too many things at once, these things take over your entire life. You stop having free moments to yourself because every moment that you’re not working feels wasted.

One of the non-profits I like, Help Guide, also has a list of symptoms for burnout that you can check against your situation. You might be forgetting things more easily, from forgetting that you had committed your time to one project when you accept another, to forgetting to do basic things like eat, drink, or maintain basic hygiene. You may find that you’re becoming sick more frequently or more easily than you have before.

You can also experience a deep sense of dread about the number of tasks you have to do, feeling as if you’ll never get any of them done, which can sap your motivation to start working on any of them at all.

This can make you feel isolated, or as if you are a failure, and might give you a sense of being trapped or helpless. You won’t receive as much satisfaction when you finish one task if you know that you’re going to have to immediately commit to another one.

What to Do if You’re Trying to Accomplish Too Much

Burnout is a problem that needs to be addressed. If you ignore it or try to “power through” it (which especially a very common trend nowadays), it will only get worse. To correct burnout, you need to identify and change your situation. You may also want to think about seeking professional guidance in more difficult situations.

Identify Your Situation

Learning to identify burnout, as well as its causes in your life, is the first step to correcting course and making sure you can function sustainably in the future. You have to know that you have a problem in order to fix it. Look for any of the signs mentioned above; ask your friends and family if they’ve noticed any changes in you. 

Seek Professional Guidance

If you are feeling exhausted and overwhelmed to the point that it is affecting your ability to function at all, you should consider seeing a professional to help you get the situation under control. 

For your physical symptoms, you should arrange an appointment with your doctor for medical advice and treatment where appropriate. They may also be able to provide you with written temporary or permanent exemptions from certain tasks if they’re causing burnout by being too physically exhausting.

You should also consider making an appointment with a therapist for your mental health symptoms, which are just as important, if not more.

A licensed and trained therapist or psychologist can offer you professional advice on how to manage your current burned-out state and how to change your routines to avoid burn out in the future.

Make Short-Term Changes

Now that you’ve identified the issue of burnout, you need to start fixing it. Again, it is not a problem that will go away on its own, so you need to be proactive. Here are some things you can do immediately to help change the situation:

• Assess your schedule. How many tasks do you have right now, and what are the timelines for each of them? You should try to see if there are any things you can reschedule for a different time that makes accomplishing other, more important tasks easier and more manageable.
• Drop unnecessary tasks. If you find that there are some tasks you can’t rearrange, then you should see if there are some you can drop completely. Are there any tasks that don’t have a specific deadline that you can put on hold until everything else is done? Are there any tasks that someone else can do instead? Talk to the other people involved in them and see if there is a way to arrange it so that the task still gets done without your help.
• Take a step back. Once you’ve gone through your schedule and rearranged it to make more sense, you should find a point as soon as possible to take a step away from all of your tasks. Explain to the other people involved, if any, that you need time to recuperate and bring yourself back to a good place. It might seem difficult to do, but you need time away from your tasks to “recharge.”
• Know that you are doing the right thing. Some people may feel guilty about dropping everything for a short time, even if it is the only way to make sure that they stay healthy and sane. This is natural and normal, and you shouldn’t feel frustrated with yourself if you find yourself feeling this way. Take a moment to remind yourself that you are doing this so that you can come back better than before.

Make Long-Term Changes

While it is incredibly important to deal with your immediate situation when it comes to burnout, you’ll also need to make some larger changes. Even before talking to a professional, there are a few staple steps you can implement in the long run to make sure you do not become overwhelmed again:

• Assess your priorities. Find the things that matter the most to you and make time for them. Think about whether the activity you’re being asked to do is necessary, helpful, or if it will make you happy. You should also consider the benefits of participating versus the stress it’s going to introduce.
• Prioritize your health. It is a simple biological fact that in order to keep yourself functional, you need to make room in your day to sleep, eat, exercise, and maintain proper hygiene. If you have to, write these things into your schedule in their own blocks, and focus on doing nothing but that particular task during a specific timeframe.
• Organize your thoughts. Building from the comments above, finding a way to categorize and compartmentalize your thoughts will make it easier to spot problems as they come up and identify how you can alleviate them. There are many ways you can do this, from journaling to exercising to seeing a therapist or talking to a friend, and in many cases, some combination of these methods. This will help you to be able to remain calm and collected when facing your issues.
• Learn to say no. The Mayo Clinic suggests that to avoid burnout, you should focus on learning to say “no” to unnecessary stressors. You should have clear and reasonable boundaries for tasks that you’re willing to accept and tasks that you aren’t. They emphasize that it isn’t selfish to turn down certain commitments, and can, in fact, make time for you to relate to people you wouldn’t normally get to spend time with when you have a hectic schedule. Be brief, honest, and respectful when saying “no,” and prioritize your “yes’s” for things that matter deeply to you.
• Make time for yourself. While this might seem like wasting time to someone who is used to constantly working, taking time to unwind and destress from a long day is extremely important to your health and can make you more productive and happier in the long run. Make time for your friends, family, pets, and hobbies. Maybe even see if you have an interest in something new that can occupy your time on your schedule without forcing another commitment onto your plate.

Feel Accomplished Without Trying to Accomplish Too Much

Everyone experiences burnout on occasion. We all appreciate the feeling of productivity and accomplishment and have a healthy drive toward seeing ourselves succeed. But when “productive” becomes “no moment spent away from an assigned task,” we lose any of the benefits of the individual actions in the sheer volume of actions and consequences together. 

Remember, you are a human being, not a machine, and you need time to process things and just breathe between tasks. There’s nothing wrong with taking the time you need to make sure that you are able to commit 100% to the things that are really important to you.