I wanted to write this down because I’ve recently found myself in that familiar place again, the silent spiral that creeps in when I keep saying yes to everything that comes my way, lose sight of my priorities, and suddenly find myself face-to-face with the little monster - imposter syndrome.
This is my way of capturing the moment not to avoid it next time, but to remind myself to pause not to stop, but to reset. To be more self-aware, and to consciously choose how I respond when it happens again because I know it will.
Being in a leadership role often means being in the middle of many moving parts like initiatives, priorities, actions, conversations and decision making. It can be quite fulfilling, but also extremely overwhelming. And sometimes, it’s not the workload that gets you it’s the way it spirals and creates the loop that you get stuck in.
What does that even mean?
You start with a clear focus and set of priorities. But as requests come in urgent things, people needing support, quick decisions, production incidents, you start saying yes naturally. You become reactive. One yes leads to another, and before you know it, you’re juggling too many things at once. Your WIP (work in progress) limit has long been crossed, but you’re still running without realising it.
This then leads to that all-too-familiar feeling of overwhelm. And when that settles in, it doesn’t stop there it comes in your way of your self-confidence. Suddenly, that quiet voice from that little monster in your head grows louder: “Am I making any real impact? Am I even doing a good job?”
It will create a lot of frustration because none of those doubts are true. But they still show up. And if you don’t catch the spiral early, it feeds itself. The more anxious you feel, the harder it is to think clearly or take a pause or to make the right decision.
So, what do you do when you catch yourself in this spiral?
For me, I’ve found a couple of things that help.
The first is my brag document a space where I regularly record wins, big and small. Sometimes I paste screenshots of kind messages, feedback, or things I’m proud of. When I start to spiral, I go back to it. It’s my gentle reminder: You’ve done great work. You’ve added value. You can do this again.
The second is something Katrina Clokie introduced me to which I'm excited to try: the idea of creating a rule book. I’m just getting started with this, but I love the intention behind it. Your rule book is a set of guiding principles for how you work especially when things get chaotic. So some of the rules that I'm going to include in my personal rule book to start with are:
- Don’t work on more than 3 things at a time
- Practice saying no or not now regularly
- Pause and reset when overwhelmed
- Focus and revisit on the “why” of the task
- Remember: not everything is urgent
These aren’t the only rules to follow, or the list might be different in some time or the list might grow as I start using it. And I know that it's more of a toolkit that I can use and come back to when I'm back in the sprial stiuation. It's useful to have such rulebook especially because when are you are stuck in those situations it's hard to think so having such pre written list as a rule book helps to refer back to.
I’m still learning how to hold space for myself during the overwhelming days. But I’ve come to believe that leadership isn’t about avoiding those moments — it’s about knowing how to pause, stop and reset.
This blog is for a reminder and a reference for myself.
What about you? What’s in your toolkit when you find yourself in these situations? I’d love to hear.
