Ep. 267: Why Everything Feels Like Too Much (Even When You're Doing Everything Right)

Have you ever looked at your calendar and thought, it's not even that full. So why do I feel like I can't breathe?

Maybe it's because overwhelm isn't measured by your schedule. It's measured by what every commitment is actually asking of you.

Today I want to show you why you can be doing everything right and still feel like you're drowning—and the one question that finally explains why.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://www.jenniferroskamp.com/personalized-operating-procedures-for-real-life--fc043

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Transcript

So I remember one particular week that fall. On paper, it looked fine. There were a few extra shifts. There was a dentist appointment for one of my kids. There was a deadline for a project that I was working on. If you looked at my calendar or my planner, you wouldn't have said, wow, that's crazy. You would have said, that's a manageable week. But I remember standing in my kitchen on a random weeknight, staring at a stack of mail that I hadn't opened in days and feeling like,

I couldn't take one more thing that was being asked of me. Nothing had actually happened that day. There wasn't anything dramatic. I just didn't have anything left to give that day. And that really is the moment that I started to understand that my exhaustion had nothing to do with what was written on the calendar, but it had everything to do with what each one of those things was quietly costing me underneath. I didn't have language for what was happening back then. I just knew something didn't add up.

That the math on the calendar and the math in my body were telling two completely different stories. And I only had access to one of them at the time. Now, capacity. It's kind of a buzzword right now. We tend to measure our ability. Think about capacity as kind of like our ability, right? Our our cup of resources, I often talk about, right? Our time, our energy, our mental bandwidth, our emotional.

Capabilities, right? And so we tend to measure our capacity just in hours, right? If I have the time, I can do it. If my calendar has an open spot, well, I I can put something there. But the thing is, is that overwhelm isn't just about hours. It's it's also very much about emotional weight. Some one hour commitments barely register. There's a walk with a friend, there's a phone call with someone who makes you feel lighter.

After you're done talking, not heavier. There's an hour spent on a hobby that actually restores you. But also, some one hour long commitments completely wreck the rest of your day. There's a tense conversation that you've been dreading. There's a meeting where you have to hold your tongue. You have to be with someone that you just can't stand to be with. There's an obligation that you agreed to out of guilt, but not out of true, genuine desire.

Both of these scenarios, all of these scenarios, occupy the same 60 minutes on the clock, but they're completely different costs to your nervous system. This is why you can have what looks like a light week and you can still feel like you're barely holding on. It's not the number of hours that's draining you, it's the emotional weight that is hiding inside those hours. It's the tension, it's the guilt, it's the anticipation, it's the bracing for impact that happens.

Before you even walk into the room when you're gonna be entering a room with a difficult person for you. If you've ever looked at a friend's calendar and it it's it's twice as full as yours, and and you've wondered how she seems so much lighter than you feel, this is probably why. It was never a fair comparison to begin with. Because you can't see the emotional weight that is attached to the other person's commitments. You can only feel what's attached to yours.

So think about your week right now. There's probably at least one thing that's happening this week that looks completely reasonable on paper and yet you're already dreading it. Maybe it's a family gathering where you know you'll end up managing everybody everyone else's mood instead of enjoying yourself. Maybe it's a work meeting where you already know that you'll have to bite your tongue. Maybe it's a phone call that you've been putting off because you know exactly how it's gonna go. None of those things show up on your calendar as anything other than an hour.

But you already know before you even walk in the door that that hour is gonna be costing you so much, far more than 60 minutes of your time. And that gap between what's on the calendar and what your gut already knows is exactly where overwhelm lives.

So here's what makes this situation so difficult to catch. Most of your exhaustion isn't coming from the big, obvious decisions. It's coming from the hundreds of tiny, invisible decisions that you make without ever noticing. Every text that you answer immediately instead of later, every favor that you say yes to before you've actually thought about it, every interruption that you absorb without complaint, every mental reminder you're keeping. Did I call the pediatrician back?

Did I follow up on that email? Did I remember to thaw something for dinner? Every I'll just do it that slides past without a second thought. All of those cost you enormous amounts. And none of those on their own look like big decisions at all. They probably don't even look like decisions. They just they feel automatic, but they're not automatic. They're just fast. You're making a decision every single time. You're just making it so quickly.

That it doesn't register as something you have a choice about. And each one of those invisible decisions pulls a small amount of attention and a small amount of patience and a small amount of your mental bandwidth. And so by the end of a day that's made up of hundreds of these small micro decisions, you're not tired from any one of them. You're tired from all of them, stacked so quickly and so quietly that you've never even had a chance to notice the toll.

That they were actually taking.

This is why I didn't even do that much today and I'm completely exhausted can both be true at the same time. Maybe you didn't do that much in terms of hours or time, but you made an enormous number of invisible decisions. And every single one of them cost something.

Try counting them for just one moment. Before you've even left the house, you've decided what to say back to a text, whether to remind your teenager about something again or just let it go. Whether to answer a work email now or later, whether to say something about a comment that stung, or if you should just brush it off. What to make for dinner, what to squeeze in, one one more thing. What one more thing could you squeeze in? Could you or couldn't you? That's six decisions before 8 a.m., maybe.

And none of them even felt like decisions at all. They just felt like, I'm just getting through the morning. Multiply that by every hour that you're awake and you start to see why a day that looks relatively empty on paper can leave you completely wrung out. It's not that you weren't doing anything, but you were making hundreds of small, fast, invisible choices. And every one of them drew from that same limited well.

Of attention and patience and capacity. There's no line item on your calendar, I'm sure, that says, make 300 small decisions today. Nobody writes that down. Nobody even thanks you for that. But it is real work and it's exactly the kind of work that goes completely unaccounted for, which is exactly why the exhaustion can feel so confusing.

So here's a phrase I hear constantly from the women I work with. I should be able to handle this. It's not that much. Other people manage more than me. And I want to give you some pushback on that. It's true, you probably are capable. That's, but that's not actually the issue. Capability was never your problem. In fact, your capability is exactly why you keep saying yes, because you can handle it. You've proven over and over and over.

That you can figure it out, that you can push through, that you can make it work. And so you keep agreeing to things. Because on paper, you're right, you probably can handle most of them. Maybe you can handle all of them. But capability was never meant to be the test for whether something belongs on your plate. Capability answers the question, can I do this? But it says nothing about what it costs you to do it or whether it deserves the cost.

The myth is believing that because you're capable of handling something, you should. And that if you struggle, it must mean that you're not strong enough or you're not organized enough or you're not disciplined enough. But that's actually backwards. The struggle isn't proof that you are failing, it's proof that you have been measuring your limits by the wrong yardstick. By capability instead of capacity. Here's what I know to be true: you are capable of an enormous amount.

And again I say that was never the question. But the real question is how much of that capability you should actually be spending and on what? How should you be spending that capability?

I think about the women that I work with who are the most exhausted. And almost without exception, they're also the most capable women that I know. And I know that that's not a coincidence. It's really the whole trap. If you weren't so good at figuring things out, you wouldn't keep getting handed more things to figure out. Nobody hands the hard, invisible, thankless tasks to the person who can't handle them. They hand them to you because you always find a way.

And because you always find a way, you've started believing that finding a way is simply who you are. It's not a limited resource that you're spending down on every single day. But the thing is, is it is a limited resource. Capability without limits is still a myth, even for the most capable women in the room. Somewhere along the way, capability got mistaken for obligation.

As if being good at something means that you owe it to everyone around you to keep doing it, no matter what it's costing you. But being able to do something well has never been the same as being required to. And so here's the shift that I wanna offer you today. Instead of asking, how do I fit this in, ask, what is this gonna cost me?

Every commitment costs something. Attention, patience, creativity, presence. Even commitments that you genuinely want to say yes to have a cost. The question isn't whether there is a cost, the question is whether you've actually looked at it honestly before agreeing. So let's make this practical. Let's say someone helps you, asks you to help plan a fundraiser. The old question, can I fit this in? It almost

Always says yes because you can rearrange things. You can stay up later. You can make it work. The new question, what will this cost me, forces you to actually look. It will cost your Tuesday evenings for six weeks. It will cost the creative energy you'd normally spend on your own goals. It will cost some patience with your family, but because you'll be more tapped out than you usually would be. Once you see the cost laid out like that, the decision that you have to make.

becomes clearer. Maybe it's still worth it. Some things absolutely are. But now you're choosing it with your eyes open instead of stumbling into it and being surprised six weeks later by how depleted you feel.

That's exactly what I didn't do during that season with my husband's nursing school. I made every decision from urgency. Can we make this work? Can I fit it in? Without ever pausing to ask what it would cost. I don't regret the choices that we made. They were the right choices for that season. But I do wish that I'd asked the cost question along the way because it would have helped me plan for the toll instead of being blindsided by it every single week.

Now here's another example, a smaller one that plays out in almost every household. Your kid asks if you can help with a school project the night before it's due. And the old question says, Can I fit this in? And we say yes almost automatically because of course you can. You'll just stay up later that night. But the new question forces you to actually look at what it costs. It will cost the hour that you were planning to unwind. It will cost tomorrow's patience because you'll be running running on less sleep.

It might even cost you your ability to be fully present for whatever the next day asks of you. Maybe when the question comes then, you'll still say yes. Helping your kid the night before a deadline could be the exact right answer. But naming the cost means that you are choosing it rather than being ambushed by how depleted you feel the next afternoon and having no understanding as to why.

If this question is so useful, why don't we ask it more naturally? What is this costing me? Here's a few reasons. First, urgency doesn't leave room for pausing. When someone needs an answer right now, or when a request comes without even a with with a hint of even a little bit of pressure, our instinct is to solve it fast, not examine it slowly. Pausing to ask, what is this going to cost me feels like it's made it's making someone wait too long for a simple answer.

The second reason we don't answer that or ask this question is because we've been trained to see hesitation as a red flag in ourselves.

If you pause before saying yes, it must be because some part of you is worrying that you're being difficult or selfish or not a team player. And so you don't let yourself hesitate. You see that as a bad thing. And so you skip the pause and you answer quickly just to avoid that internal discomfort. And third, honestly, sometimes we don't know, we don't want to know the real cost. If you actually sat with what a commitment would take from you, you might have to say no.

And saying no still feels harder for a lot of us than saying yes and quietly absorbing the cost that we can't really afford. None of these things are things that make you weak. It makes you someone who's been operating on urgency for so long that intention feels unfamiliar. But unfamiliar isn't the same as impossible. It just means that this is a muscle that you're gonna have to work on building on purpose. Now, the good news is.

That this muscle builds faster than you'd expect. The first few times you pause before answering, it is going to feel awkward, maybe even a little bit rude. But each time you do it, the pause gets a little more natural and the question gets a little bit easier to ask until eventually checking the cost before you agree to pay it, it just becomes part of how you operate. Now, here's where I want to get practical.

This is what you should do this week. And know that none of this requires you to overhaul your whole calendar overnight. It's just gonna require you to start noticing the cost before you agree to pay it. First, before you say yes to anything new, pause and ask out loud, what is this going to cost me? And don't just look at it in terms of time, right? It's attention, it's patience, it's creativity, it's presence, it's it's all of those things. Name the actual cost before you agree to pay it. Second,

Look at one thing that's already on your calendar this week that has been quietly draining you and ask what it's really costing. You may not be able to remove it, but naming the cost honestly changes how you carry that perceived cost. And you stop being surprised by the exhaustion and you start expecting it, which it brings its own kind of relief. Third.

Notice the invisible decisions. For one day this week, try to catch yourself in the micro moments. The instant replies, the automatic yeses, the I'll just do it reflex when that shows up. And just pause for two seconds before acting on autopilot. You don't have to change your answer every time. Just notice that a decision is actually happening. And fourth, give yourself permission to choose something specifically.

Because the cost is low. Not everything has to be meaningful or productive. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can add to your week is something that costs you almost nothing and gives something back. If you try nothing else this week, try this. The next time someone asks something of you, don't answer right away. Say, let me think about it and I'll get back to you. And use that pause to actually ask the cost question.

Instead of answering from the same automatic place that you always have.

The question isn't, can I fit this in or can I figure it out? It's what will this require of me? And sit with that before you answer. You might still say yes, but you'll be saying it on purpose with your eyes open instead of finding out the cost six weeks later when you're running on empty and wondering how you got there. Again, we're not after the ability or the outcome of saying no more often. It's about saying yes with our eyes open.

And know with a little more courage once you actually know what something is going to require from you. So here are four takeaways for today. Know that overwhelm is measured in weight, not hours. A light-looking calendar can still leave you exhausted if what's on it carries enough emotional weight, tension, guilt, anticipation. Stop comparing your schedule to anyone else's. You

Can you are the only one who can feel that load? You can't feel theirs and they can't feel yours. Takeaway number two, invisible decisions create invisible exhaustion. The instant replies, the automatic yeses, and constant mental reminders maybe don't feel like exhaustion, and they don't even feel like decisions because they happen so fast. But they add up. And by the end of the day, you're paying for hundreds of tiny choices.

That you never noticed yourself making.

Takeaway three. Capability isn't the same as capacity. Being able to handle something was never proof that you should take it on. The real question isn't, can I? It's what will this cost me? And is it worth the cost right now in this season with what you actually have to give? Number four, ask what it will cost, not just whether you can fit it in. Every commitment is gonna cost you something. Attention.

Patience, creativity, presence. Naming that cost honestly before you agree to it is what turns a reactive yes into an intentional one and makes an honest no so much easier to give. Friend, we have done, we have done some deep looking. We have built awareness. We have named a lot of things. We've put language.

To a lot of things that have been happening for years, maybe even decades, that you haven't known how to describe what's happening. You haven't been able to put them into words. But now you have words and understanding for what's actually going on. I challenge you to not just let this be something really cool that you listened to. Let this be something that changes how you move forward. That's my challenge to you.

And if you know of someone who needs to hear the same conversation, please share it with her. A lot of women are walking around absolutely beyond exhausted and having no idea why. Share this conversation with them. You could just have a new best friend. And so, until we talk again, make it an intentional day.