#149| The Math of Overwhelm: Why You Feel Behind (Even When You’re Working Hard): Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing

Are you constantly ending your week wondering why you still didn’t get everything done—even though you were “busy” the entire time?

If you're a working woman juggling clients, kids, and an endless to-do list, there's a good chance you're not actually bad at time management—you’re just doing the math wrong. This episode reveals how a simple yet powerful planning strategy can shift your entire weekly mindset from overwhelm to calm.

In this episode, you will:

• Learn the 10-minute math trick to instantly spot why your to-do list never gets done
• Discover how to stop feeling like a failure every Friday
• Find out how to create realistic expectations that align with your actual available hours

Hit play now to learn the one equation that will transform how you plan your week—and help you finally feel done by Friday.

Featured on the podcast:
Episode 20: Why You Need To Set Realistic Expectations

Wondering why you're overwhelmed? Take my "why am I overwhelmed" quiz to find out the source of your overwhelm, and what to do about it.

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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Worki...

Chapters

• 1:16 The Math Equation That Is Causing Your Overwhelm
• 2:37 The Importance of Realistic Expectations

Transcript

Michelle Gauthier: 0:01

If you end up feeling frustrated at the end of every week thinking about the things that you didn't get done, you might have a math problem. You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life. Hi, friend, I'm laughing at myself that I'm doing a podcast about math because it has traditionally not been my favorite subject, but this is a really important math equation that I need to teach you about. That will really help you feel less overwhelmed during and at the end of the week. In this quick episode, you'll learn a simple math problem that might be causing your overwhelm, why ignoring that sets you up to feel behind every single week, and how to fix it in under 10 minutes. Spoiler alert it's way easier than algebra and it might just change the way you plan your whole entire week. Here's something I see all the time: smart, capable women trying to squeeze in 60 hours of work into 12 available hours. It's like trying to fit a gallon of water into a coffee mug. It just does not work. So today I'm going to share with you how to evaluate yourself and see if you are doing this to yourself, and I'm going to use my schedule as an example. So this past week I'm recording this on Friday afternoon, which I'll get to the end of that story by the end of the episode but I'm recording this on a Friday afternoon and this week, when I was planning my week, I looked at what I had to do, my to do list, and I added up all the time that that was going to take me. I'm pretty good at estimating it now. At first I wasn't great at estimating it, so just give it a whirl and estimate high. If you need to estimate in any direction, estimate high. And then I looked at my schedule and saw where I already had client appointments, things I need to do for my kids I always schedule my workouts in and I saw how many hours I had available. So for me this week I had 12 hours of stuff that I needed to get done 11 work and one personal and I had 14 open hours on my calendar to do it. When I do that math 14 hours of open time minus 12 hours of to-do I'm golden. I've got two extra hours in there somewhere where I could take a rest or get something else done. I'm good to go.

Michelle Gauthier: 2:37

But I'll tell you, what I normally see, especially with a new client, is that when I have them do this exercise of adding up everything on their to-do list and then seeing how many free hours they have and by free hours I mean working hours where they don't already have something on their calendar at that time, it really truly can be a ratio, like I said at the beginning, 60 hours of to-dos on their to-do list into 12 open available hours or 50 hours and five open hours to do that. So when you do the math in that direction let's say we use the example of my client, jenny, who I mentioned on episode 148, she really truly did have five hours of open time on her calendar and 50 hours of to-dos on her to-do list. So what that means if we do that math 5 minus 50, negative 45. She needs 45 additional hours in the week to get everything done on her to-do list. And so at the end of the week, what that causes when you don't do this math, first to understand oh, okay, I'm reasonably not going to get anywhere close to getting those things done. What was happening is that every week she was feeling like a failure this stuff is still staying on my to-do list, I'm not getting anything done. And then you just get into this time deficit where you're always behind on what you have to do. So if this is resonating with you and you're like, okay, yep, that's me, I'm absolutely doing that.

Michelle Gauthier: 4:04

A couple things that I want to encourage you to do. Number one actually do this math. If you go to episode 148, you'll get all the details on exactly how to do the calendar clean out process that I use every week. There's even a worksheet that goes with it. So do the math and figure out what your number is. And if your number of to do's is higher than your number of available hours to work, then just start prioritizing. Pick what's most important for this particular week, just number them one, two and three and see where you can fit them in.

Michelle Gauthier: 4:36

So that example I gave you for me of having 12 hours of to-dos this week is because I know ballpark what I can get done in a week If I had no clients for the entire week and I had 40 hours or 35 hours to work on, just work stuff. I could absolutely fill that up, but because I sort of know what my budget for time is, I make my to do list accordingly. If you have a job where you like to plan way out in advance the things that you have to do, it's great to keep a huge to-do list with absolutely everything on it. But when you go to planning your week, use this math problem to figure out which ones are actually going to make it on your list this week and make that your to-do list for this week. Keep that other big old list and then the next week go pick some stuff off that or add things on throughout the week.

Michelle Gauthier: 5:28

And I'll tell you what ended up happening with me this week, even though when I looked at my plan I was like, good, I'm good, two hours in the good, I should be able to get everything done. What happened because my kids finished school this week is I spent unplanned time during the day taking my daughter places and running some errands that I hadn't planned for. So what happened is I got to the end of the week and I saw my last client on Friday afternoon. I finished at one, which is the time that I usually finished working, but I still had three hours of work left to do. So my options for that when that happens to you if you underestimate my options for that are to take those three hours and kick them over into the next week and try to fit that to do in there.

Michelle Gauthier: 6:14

But in this case, I really wanted to get it done this week so that I could put the podcast out on time. So I decided that I was just going to keep working. I didn't have other things planned. I just normally don't work that late on Fridays, so I'm just working and getting it done, and I do this every week and I still make mistakes. So it's not going to be perfect, but I promise you, if you manage your time in this way, you will feel so much better.

Michelle Gauthier: 6:37

Because what happens as humans and you can learn all about this in episode number 20 about setting our expectations is when you have an expectation, even an unconscious one, of I'm going to get all this stuff done this week, or I should get all this stuff done this week, and then you don't. You're suffering because of the expectation that you made up, right? So the to do list isn't the problem. It's the expectation that you had that you were going to finish it all. That's the problem. So if you do the real numbers and look at the real math, your expectation is a really good, educated guess instead of a totally random, unconscious expectation that you're going to get it all done.

Michelle Gauthier: 7:17

Okay, you got this. If this podcast has provided you with any value today or any other day that you listen to it, I would love if you would leave a review. It means so much. It really helps the podcast get shown to more people and our audience keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I would really appreciate if you would just take a minute to do that. Have a fantastic week. Hope your math problem works out. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier. com. See you next week.