5 Steps to Overcome Feeling Overwhelmed

As the school year is wrapping up, I recently had a student who was feeling very overwhelmed. And because of that feeling, he was struggling to focus. It's hard for kids to learn when they can't focus because they are overwhelmed, so I had this student try this 5 step strategy so he could overcome this feeling and focus on his work.

1. Write down all the things you need to do. No sorting or organizing - just a quick brain dump of all the things taking up your brain space.

   
   

2. Sort the tasks into meaningful groups. This could be by due date, which I had this student do, or it could be by priority or even by time needed to complete. Whatever makes sense as an organizing strategy for the tasks.

   
   
   
   

   

   
   
   
   
   
   

3. Assign time needed to complete each task.

   
   

4. Begin plugging tasks into your calendar to block time to complete them.

   
   

5. Begin knocking those tasks off your to-do list!

Just getting tasks down and scheduled is a great way to overcome the anxiety of feeling overwhelmed and free up cognitive energy to put into doing the tasks and for other, hopefully more fun, endeavors!