The feeling is familiar.
Your inbox is full, your to-do list is three pages long, your phone is buzzing, and you have conflicting deadlines. Your mind starts to spin. You feel a tightness in your chest.
This is the state of “overwhelm.”
In this state, your mind is like a computer with too many programs open. It’s overheating. It can’t process anything, so it just spins, which is the mental-emotional equivalent of a loading wheel.
Our first instinct is to try and “solve” the overwhelm. We try to think our way out. We frantically try to “do” all 50 things at once. This is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
There is a simple, powerful question that can stop this entire loop. It is a question that cuts through the noise and acts like a “hard reset” on your spinning mind.
Do not ask, “How will I ever get this all done?” Do not ask, “Why is this happening to me?”
Ask this:
“What is the next logical step?”
That’s it.
Why This Question Works
The feeling of “overwhelm” is an illusion.
It’s a fiction your mind creates when it tries to hold the past, the present, and the future all at the same time. You aren’t overwhelmed by the task. You are overwhelmed by your story about the task.
The question “What is the next logical step?” is a tool of de-illusion.
- It defeats the “Future” Fiction: It stops your mind from simulating the “disaster” of the next 100 steps. It forces your powerful analytical brain to stop running “what if” scenarios and focus on a real problem.
- It defeats the “Past” Fiction: It stops you from ruminating on the “mistakes” that got you here. It doesn’t care about the past. It’s a forward-moving question.
- It forces you into the “Real”: It pulls you out of the imaginary world of anxiety (the fictions) and into the physical, manageable world (the facts). It moves you from “feeling” to “doing.”
The “next logical step” is almost always small and obvious.
- Open the document.
- Write one email.
- Put on your running shoes.
- Close all the tabs.
This is how you move from being a panicked “driver,” frantically spinning the wheel, to being a calm passenger. You observe the chaos, and then you just calmly suggest the next, simplest, most obvious move.
You cannot “solve” the giant, abstract monster called “overwhelm.” It’s a fiction. But you can take one small, real step. And that one step is all you ever need to do.
