How to Get Organized at Work When Overwhelmed

Time anxiety is a real thing nowadays. Let’s stop for a second and normalize that – it’s ok if you’re feeling this way!

The problem is that when overwhelm strikes, your first countermeasure shouldn’t be to work harder, but it should be to see clearer:

see what your priorities are, how to re-adjust deadlines, declutter both your mind and space, and apply strategies that really move the needle.

I’ll go over all of these in this article so you can always be equipped to answer the question of “How to get organized at work when overwhelmed.”

Key takeaways

• Ask for help if you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed with work; It’s not a sign of weakness.
• Brain dump first, organize second. Get everything out of your head before prioritizing with the Eisenhower Matrix (the president’s method of distinguishing between what’s urgent and what’s important).
• Be realistic in your planning. Choose 2-3 main priorities daily, not an impossible list.
• Measure your workload objectively. Use time tracking to gather evidence about your true capacity.
• Apply a “touch it once” strategy for notifications. Process emails and messages with a strategy so that these don’t clutter your brain: delete, delegate, respond, or defer.

How to get organized at work when overwhelmed: 10 ways

1. Get clarity on what you need to do (your task list)

Sit down in front of a blank list and do a brain dump of your tasks – it doesn’t need to be longer than 10 minutes, but all these scattered ideas and messages in your brain need to be organized. Your list can be digital or analog, from digital planners to productivity apps for Mac sticky notes… Whatever works for you.

The exercise has a pivotal role: to release every task, project, commitment, and looming deadline from your mind onto a page. It helps you reorganize and declutter your overwhelmed brain and store every bit of information where it needs to be; otherwise, it just gets you anxious, tired with overthinking, and overwhelmed. So, don’t skip it. It’s the first step toward feeling that you’ve got it, that you’re staying on top of everything.

So, continue writing every task on your mind down, without censoring yourself, filtering, or organizing yet—simply extract, and you can organize later. With everything externalized, you can then assess your complete landscape of tasks without the distortion of stress.

This clarity isn’t just procedural. It’s the psychological backbone that transforms paralyzing overwhelm into manageable action. Finished writing? Okay, let’s move on.

💡 Pro Tip: Not sure how to use a planner? Our article explains how to increase your productivity with this tool and leverage it to its capacity.

2. Prioritize your list like a president

Okay, now prioritize tasks using your discernment and smart prioritization techniques. In this case, I’ll introduce you to the most effective method I’m using to cut through the noise of competing priorities: the time management matrix.

For context, it’s not just used by me, but it was created by the productivity-obsessed 34th president of the US, Eisenhower, when he was both the US Army general and then Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Forces.

How to implement it:

Divide your task list into four quadrants based on two dimensions: urgency and importance.

• Write down your urgent and important tasks that need your immediate attention and energy. These will be your “Do now” tasks, so you do these first.
• Write down your important but not urgent tasks, and because these don’t have the pressure of immediacy, “Schedule” them for later (today or tomorrow).
• Now, you’re reaching simpler categories in which you have important but not urgent tasks that will be “Delegated.”
• Finally, you have neither urgent nor important tasks that represent intellectual clutter that deserves to be “Eliminated.”

Ultimately, this matrix isn’t merely organizational, but it’s a decision-making system that ensures your finite attention flows toward what genuinely matters and prevents you from mistaking the merely urgent for the truly important.

💡 Pro Tip: Want to dive more into practical techniques on prioritization and tools to help with prioritising difficult tasks? This article on the best workload prioritization tools covers all you need!

3. Be realistic in your planning

I’ve been guilty of overplanning many times, but my ambitious prioritization was also an optimistic delusion that I’d somehow bend the laws of time and energy to my will. Reality check? It didn’t happen, or it happened with countless hours of overtime, which had a big toll on my work-life balance.

Instead, apply this productivity paradox: constraining your daily commitments actually expands your output, and apply it this way:

• Choose no more than 2-3 significant priorities for your day (the ones in the “Do now” category) and buffer your schedule generously, allowing 50% more time than you initially estimated for complex tasks. This isn’t lowering your standards, but it’s honouring reality – how many times did you think you’d be able to work more than you actually did?

• Then, add a few smaller tasks to the list, too (the ones that were “Scheduled”). Also, factor in the inevitable context-switching costs, unexpected events, and your own cognitive limitations.

It’s important to consider your energy curve throughout the day: are you a morning strategist or an afternoon executor? Plan managing tasks with a higher level of difficulty when you’re at peak performance.

💡 Pro Tip: The most effective professionals aren’t those who plan to do everything but those who create the space necessary for deep work, set realistic goals, and think of ways to protect their energy so they can genuinely move the needle.

4. Block your time for deep work on priorities

Now that you have clarity on what needs to be done, you’ve chosen your tasks for the day. But let’s be sure you won’t get interrupted so you can move your project forward.

Claim territory in your calendar for substantial, uninterrupted blocks, ideally 90-120 minutes, for these cognitively demanding tasks that are also urgent. It’s as simple as adding meetings to your calendar that you have to honor for your tasks and focus on deep work in those blocks. These periods require, as Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University who wrote the bestseller Deep Work, digital monasticism.

What’s that, you ask? Notifications silenced, messaging apps closed, and attention fully to your priority or task.

In between your deep work sessions, add shorter time blocks for admin tasks, sending messages, and some quick back-to-back meetings. These should ideally be 10-15 minute breathing spaces that prevent cognitive whiplash and sustain your mental endurance.

5. Implement a “touch it once” strategy for notifications

To reach productivity, you need to know how to manage your attention. Ultimately, the relentless tide of emails, messages, and notifications fragment your attention and reduce the quality of your decisions. For this, you need to apply the simple “touch it once” principle that eliminates the costly habit of revisiting the same information repeatedly, which turns them into time wasters.

When an email appears, resist the passive act of merely reading it. Instead, immediately process it through a decisive framework:

• Delete it if it requires no action or response;
• Delegate it if someone else should handle it;
• Respond immediately if it takes less than two minutes;
• Defer it by scheduling a specific time block for proper attention;
• Do it now if it’s urgent and important.

The same strategy applies to Slack messages and other notifications. In this way, you’re transforming your relationship with incoming information from reactive to intentional, which saves considerable cognitive bandwidth.

6. Audit your workload with a time tracker

Our perception of why we’re feeling overwhelmed is, most of the time, skewed. I bet you thought that your time management skills were the issue or that there were so many areas that you’re not good at, so you just have to deal with an overwhelming feeling endlessly.

But did you ever feel that your to-do list is too long? Or let me put it differently. Did you think that there’s a workload overload that your managers or employees need to decrease?

I’m not blaming it on your skills or on your leaders, but there’s only one way of finding out the truth: measuring how you spend your time objectively. The instrument? A time-tracking app that records in the background your work, without your manual input, as you shouldn’t take on any other task, as you’re already overwhelmed, right?

Enter EARLY – an automatic time tracker that reveals the reality of your workday—from the 45-minute meeting that consistently consumes 90 minutes with full-on prep and follow-up to the “quick emails” that silently steal two hours daily.

Take the first step towards organizing your work and start tracking time today

Try EARLY for free

Here’s what you need to do:

• Collect at least two weeks of data with this AI time tracker – Don’t worry, just install it and make a quick initial set-up and then forget about it and just do your work. It will record everything for you.
• Analyze the results against your role expectations and contracted hours. Did you consistently have too many overtime hours and not enough time for your personal life? Did you spend more than your manager has estimated on the reporting process? Did you do too many side tasks as you were asked to, and you were left with only a few hours for your core work in a week?
• Show the data to your leaders. This evidence-based approach transforms potentially difficult talks about workload from subjective complaints into data-driven discussions, so don’t worry. Show your managers all the discrepancies revealed by the time report, and start discussing your workload management.
• Ask for changes in your workload, like task elimination, deadline adjustments, responsibility redistribution, or process optimization. All of these should be counterbalanced with your work goals and the company’s objectives, too.
• Ask for new tools. If you’ve reached the conclusion that your overwhelming workload is due to wasting time with outdated tools, then ask for another project management tool, the right productivity tools, and anything else you’d need in your tool stack.

7. Say no to more work

Being the yes person too often ultimately diminishes your ability to deliver quality work and gets you overwhelmed.

Repeatedly taking on tasks that involve threats (like impossible deadlines or excessive workloads) elevates your stress level. When you fail to set boundaries, you risk not only burnout, which affects a quarter of workers across 15 countries, according to McKinsey Health, but also compromise the very reputation for excellence you’re trying to build.

Counterintuitively, being strategic and refusing more tasks after a simple workload analysis proves that you have leadership skills and time management that earn respect. I know that saying no is hard and comes with some anxiety, but with practice, it becomes a powerful skill that preserves your focus on what truly matters.

I wrote an entire guide on this topic, so dive into how to say no at work for more details.

8. Manage your energy

How many times have you felt like you can’t even get up from your chair because of your endless to-do list, but when you gave yourself space to go out for a walk, you actually came back more energic, recharged, and with fresh ideas? Oftentimes, mental fatigue, not calendar availability, becomes the true limiting factor in sustainable productivity.

Even if this is the last you’d like to hear when your to-do list is piling up, you need to pause, take a deep breath, and leave your overdue tasks on hold for only a few minutes makes wonder. Implement deliberate recovery practices throughout your day to recharge your energy:

• A deep breath exercise (like the 4-7-8 technique or the box breathing technique) activates your parasympathetic nervous system in just 90 seconds, which leads to relaxation.
• Strategic journaling comes with cognitive offloading, particularly when you’re observing racing thoughts or worries that make your mind static and unable to come up with new ideas.
• Brief meditation sessions of even just 5 minutes help you reset your attentional capacity, as these train your mind to be present rather than reactive;
• Walking meetings or stretching breaks come with all types of benefits that improve your creative thinking, as well as release the physical tension that accumulates during focused work, sending fresh oxygen to your body and brain.

9. Declutter your space

Perhaps it’s not on your productivity tips expected list, but a cluttered workspace is a cognitive drain that subtly hijacks your attention and depletes mental bandwidth. Create an environment that supports focused work by keeping your surroundings as clean and minimal as possible. Keep only current project materials visible while archiving the rest.

Position your most frequently used tools within arm’s reach to minimize micro interruptions and set dedicated zones in the entire room for specific activities like deep work or creative thinking. This primes your brain to get into a certain mode based on different contextual cues.

Your digital organization deserves equal attention: close unnecessary tabs, implement folder systems that prioritize current projects, and leverage workplace automation to reduce admin friction.

Overall, keeping clean space reduces decision fatigue and creates the conditions where your best thinking can emerge without unnecessary resistance.

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10. Don’t beat yourself up

I’ll start with the hardest thing of them all – but honestly, you need to stop bashing yourself over the head and continuously thinking that you’re behind with your daily tasks. You only get crippled by anxiety and will get into a loop of toxic productivity.

Just accept your current state – it’s hard, I know – I’m saying this as a recovering perfectionist with a burnout under my belt – it took me a long time to accept things as they are. I can’t always stay on top of everything, and that’s okay. However, I’ll try to do whatever lies in my power to regain control over work, manage my important tasks strategically and escape this overwhelming feeling.

Channel those feelings to find a solution to your problems rather than worry. Now, once you have clarity, take a 10-minute break and do breathing exercises, meditate for a little bit, stare out a window, or go outside and breathe fresh air. Use these techniques to relax, lower your heart rate, and regroup your thoughts.

Conclusion

Workplace overwhelm needs to be managed strategically so you can regain control. To avoid getting overwhelmed, set a routine that works for you and make it happen. 

Choose the strategies that actually work for you, and take it one task at a time without obsessing over perfection. Start creating systems, assign tasks with priority first, then the smaller tasks, take breaks, protect your energy, and use a time tracker to see your workload objectively.

Sources

https://calnewport.com/on-the-neurochemistry-of-deep-work

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-burnout

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