EP47 Navigating Overwhelm - The Clarity Principle

Summary

In this conversation, Mike and Troye discuss the concept of overwhelm, emphasising that it is not merely about having too much to do, but rather a lack of clarity in various aspects of life. They highlight the importance of clarity of mind, systems, priorities, and action in overcoming feelings of overwhelm and achieving better outcomes.


Takeaways

Overwhelm is not just about workload.
Clarity is essential for effective action.
Mind clarity helps in decision-making.
Systems can streamline our tasks.
Prioritizing tasks reduces feelings of overwhelm.
Knowing the next step is crucial.
A clear mindset enhances productivity.
Action clarity leads to better results.
Confusion arises from too many tasks.
Structure in systems aids in focus.

Keywords

overwhelm, clarity, priorities, action, systems, mindset

Find out more about  working with me or about applying to join the ILN.  mike@smbmastery.com.au

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeadamscott/

https://theintentionalleaders.com/

Transcript

Mike Scott (00:02.712)
Troy, stop laughing. Welcome back, guys and girls. Good to be back. So after Dr. Troy Wallet's first appearance, we've had some really good feedback. In fact, more than just good feedback, I actually had a friend of mine who's a pretty awesome entrepreneur. You know who you are, buddy. You reach out to me on text and say, that was great. More of Troy. Bring more of Troy. So Troy is back. So I'm going to say welcome back, Troy. Welcome back, But that's the last time I'm going to say welcome back because you're no longer a guest.

Troye (00:26.256)
Thanks, Mike.

Mike Scott (00:31.342)
Troy is gonna be a regular feature. So I'm not gonna be nice to him anymore. We put a poll out asking what would be most valuable for Troy and my next conversation. And we gave three options because people need options. And option one was overwhelm, option two was cashflow, option three was people or team. I gotta be honest, I was actually surprised. I thought cashflow would come back as number one, but it didn't. Overwhelm got, I'll resist the pun here, but overwhelm got 55%.

Troye (00:32.026)
Yeah.

Troye (00:59.308)
Don't resist it, Mark. Just lean into it.

Mike Scott (01:01.646)
I was not overwhelmingly overwhelmed with voting. So overwhelm got 55%. People got 28%. Cashflow got 14%. And for those of you that are very sharp, you'll notice there's 3 % missing. That was just for people who said other. And some things we got were things like time management. Interestingly, we'll actually probably get a little bit to time management in this episode. So today we're to talk about overwhelm. What is it? What to do about it? Who gets it? How to use it? Maybe even to your advantage.

I've got so many thoughts on this, but I therefore do not want to start. And I'm going to start with you, Troy. When I ask you, what is overwhelm? Where does your brain go?

Troye (01:39.238)
That's so funny, it goes exactly to the same question. I was gonna ask you exactly the same thing because you love to define things and be very clear on the definition. And I think this is a great way to start is because often if you don't know what you're talking about, you can end up in going into different places. But when you talk about overwhelming the words that come to me are stressed, thrashing.

and I guess, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, means that there, feels like that there's so much for me to be doing. there's so much in my vision that it kind of stops me from moving effectively. So I think that's kind of a good place to start because there's lots of little words in there that I think we could riff on, from a, from a sort of definition point of view.

Mike Scott (02:38.156)
I want to start by saying, let me be very clear. I get overwhelmed a lot often, which is why I have so much to share on this. Not because I've mastered it, not because I will teach you how to not get it, but because it plagues me. So what you just said, there is really, it's almost triggering for me actually, that what happens with me with overwhelm is I become paralyzed. I basically procrastinate. So for me, there's a very clear cycle and I won't bore everyone with my cycle. We'll get to it today.

But I do like to define things and I do like to be very clear with words. So when I think about overwhelm, I think about too much to do and I've got to catch up and do more. But what I've come to learn is that overwhelm is not about having too much to do. It's not even necessarily about knowing what to do next, but it's more about not having clarity.

clarity of mind, clarity of systems, clarity of priorities, clarity of action. This is very counterintuitive though, because most people I come across in my world are very A type, high performing type people. And what we do and overwhelm is we go, I will outwork, I will work out of this. I will think myself out of this. I will spin more plates. That doesn't work. It just doesn't. There's a bunch of evidence behind this. know, Troy's the doctor, I'm not, so I'm probably gonna get this wrong, but.

The neuroscience behind this is that when we get into a super stressed environment, especially fear, our amygdala triggers. That's a shitty part of the brain to do thinking work. And our prefrontal cortex actually shuts down. That's a great part of the brain to do thinking work. So there's a neuroscience element to this. If you want to get into this and nerd out a little bit, Daniel Kahneman, actually won a Nobel Prize, is amazing to get into this. But let's stop getting into the theory. So overwhelm.

It is when we feel like we've got too much, we're over our skis, when it's all too much to bear. The default thinking is that I can work my way out of this, I just need to make the to-do list, I just need to get that done, I can think my way out of it. That's a fallacy, it doesn't work. So what do we do about this? Troy, talk to me about when you think about, okay, I'm overwhelmed, what do I do next? Where does your brain go?

Troye (04:58.501)
Well, I think, I mean, the interesting thing about this is that work is like Instagram. It's kind of like this infinite scroll. You never, ever, ever going to get down to the end of the work list. Like there's always more to do. I kind of, I like where you're heading with this because it's, it's overwhelm is not a...

more on the to-do list. It's actually just, it is actually just a feeling. It's a feeling inside and what this is reminding me a whole bunch about is that stress performance curve, I love. And so you kind of, for those that haven't heard too much about it, the stress performance curve, as your stress goes up, I'll try and get my finger on the video for those on video, as your stress goes up,

your performance will go up until it hits a point. And you kind of want to be working, if you're to work at a high level, just off that, off that point of overwhelm, let's call it. And then it, because as the stress goes beyond a point, your performance drops off in a very huge and quick way. And so it's managing that, that feeling of,

of stress. And the other thing about stress is one of the definitions, which is very similar to this is when the demands on you exceed your capabilities to meet those demands, which is quite another, quite a cool way to think about it. So I'm kind of mixing stress with overwhelm here. And perhaps the idea is overwhelm is when it's probably triggered in my head when

A lot has come from the outside. So if I get 20, I look at my email inbox and I've got 25 emails and then you give me a call and say, Hey, we need to meet up about this. And then somebody else will get, they will sort of add something more to my list. And I've actually got a full day anyway. And all of a sudden I'm like, I've got stuff everywhere. So that's all the external part that will trigger off this stress response. But as you can see, and in fact, I've come up with, it's a pretty cool picture that's come to mind is if you're swimming.

Troye (07:05.271)
in a lake or something and keep people keep on throwing stuff in your lake. It's very becomes very muddy, very murky, very quickly. So I have, I love the idea of clarity. the, the oval, the, this is your saying, I'm stealing it from you on your own podcast is the antidote to overwhelm is clarity. So I'd be quite keen to sort of think about how clarity like let's go.

Mike Scott (07:31.948)
want to jump in but before you do that stress performance curve thing does it is everybody's point the same

Troye (07:37.766)
No, no, and I think that's the, that's, this is when you think about yourself and when you think about your team, if you're leading a team, it's actually key to know where people's stress performance curve sits. Because my stress performance curve is like super low. As soon as my stress goes up, my performance drops off. So.

Mike Scott (07:58.648)
But I think this is quite funny guys. mean, I Troy too well. when Tres, when Troy's stress goes up and his point on his stress performance curve gets too high, he takes a nap. When my stress goes up, I'm not happy, but my performance goes through the roof. So don't get me wrong. I'm not enjoying it, but I perform, right? It doesn't really serve me necessarily though. So this is, this is the point, right? Troy gets stressed, his performance dips. I get stressed, my performance improves, but I'm not happy.

Troye (08:08.974)
Yeah.

Mike Scott (08:27.118)
So it's not a good place to live, but it's an interesting thing to know. I don't know how mathematical it needs to be, as Troy was saying, it's an interesting thing to know where you and your teams sit on this stress performance curve. To make this like super practical in building the ILN, Troy communicates with me. You'll say like, this is beginning to make me stressed. I need to decrease my stress if I'm going to perform. And I'll be honest in the beginning, I'm like, that's ridiculous. You just got to do it. But I've learned to go, hold on.

this actually doesn't serve the business. We need to bring Troy's stress down and then his performance will go up. That's incredibly useful and powerful to know about the people you're working with.

Troye (09:03.877)
And what's important with this is you don't, it's not about removing work off my plate. And I think that in the beginning, this is where you kind of, you were worried about it. Like you were like, okay, Troy's getting stressed. I need to take the jobs from him, which just increases your stress level. And then it feels like you having to sort of, you're burdened with this whole thing. That's not true. It's what you, for me to get my task list done, I need to feel less stressed.

not have less to do, which is key.

Mike Scott (09:33.688)
Okay.

So let's get back into this clarity thing. So there are a bunch of types of clarity that we're to talk about. The first one is systems clarity. And I want to start with, I'm going to say some stuff Troy, and you please feel free to challenge me or whatever. We haven't co-prepared for this guys and girls, so it should be good. First statement I want to make is that your brain is not designed to store tasks. It's designed to solve them. So this is backed by psychology. The brain hates vague open loops. Man, I can relate to that so much. I hate open loops.

Once you define the next action though, the next right action, the stress drops dramatically. Now, why am I saying this, right? We need a system to capture all of the stored tasks so that we don't have to. like there's a near cult following of a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. It's extremely boring to read, but it is absolutely incredible. Now not gonna go too much into GTD, getting things done, but it's the best, it's the best kind of system I've come across to.

capture the things out of your head. the principles of this that work for me are capture everything in one single place, decide how to prioritize it, put it somewhere that you know it's gonna be there, review it, we'll talk about a review a little bit later, and then do the next right thing. A key thing that I wanna share here though is that someone gave me really good advice a long time ago that when you're feeling overwhelmed, it's not only about doing the next action, but you actually challenge yourself to do the smallest version.

of the next action. So Troy loves his triathlon training. He might feel overwhelmed with his training and he's got to go and do an 80 kilometer ride. That feels overwhelming. The next action is not do the ride. The next action is like walk to your bedroom, get your kit. That's the next action. Then the next action is put your shoes on. Then the next action is et cetera, et cetera. Troy, systems that help you. Any thoughts on this?

Troye (11:27.494)
no, I'm actually just intrigued about what you're just saying because I only half agree with you. think if, mean, if you're super overwhelmed, then just do one thing, like do the smallest thing, 100 % agree. But I actually think that being like...

When I look through my to-do list like that, I don't look at it as like, what's the next smallest action? I actually look at it as like, what's going to decrease my stress the most? If I get this, and it might not be the thing I want to do. fact, like it might be the last thing I want to do, but I look at it and I go, if I'm, hate phoning people, if I just hate it. But if the next step, if the thing that's me out the most is making that phone call.

that's what I do. And I'm sure that's kind of what you were sort of alluding to, but it wasn't sort of clear on what you're saying.

Mike Scott (12:19.22)
Well, no, I wasn't like it's a good challenge because I wasn't actually leading to that but but now I'm going to because I can't resist practical things, right? So You want a tool for this? a guy called Oliver Bergman wrote a book called 4,000 weeks and he came up with a very simple tool called the three three three method and that's this is a good segue because The first three is spend three hours every day working on the most important thing that there's a kicker here This is what I want to build on what Troy was saying. It's not always the most urgent not always the most interesting

but it's the most important. And what I like what you were saying there Troy is like, you're defining the most important in the context of overwhelm is the thing that's stressing you out the most. The interesting thing about this, I don't know what your experience is like, but always when I think something's going to be terrible, once I start, it doesn't seem as bad. It doesn't seem as scary. It doesn't seem as big. Whether it's training or work, whether it's work.

Troye (13:05.911)
Or it might do, but you're still going to do it. It might do, but you're still going to do it anyway. Like, I mean, I think you're making it feel nice, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes it is just, you've got to sit down and do the rubbish work. Like, let's not, let's not make this like, like, like happy, happy and nice. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes you've got to fire that person. Sometimes you've got to like do that horrible thing that's stressing you out.

I guess what I was really mostly saying is that I'm optimizing to decrease my overwhelm. In these, when I'm in that situation, I'm consciously considering I need to bring this down.

Mike Scott (13:45.571)
Yeah, I think that's a good point. know, like majority of what you're doing in building a business is boring at best. Right. Like the highlight reels on social media is not what it feels like to be building most businesses most of the time. So just to close the loop on the little tool. So the first three out of the three, three, three is three hours on the most important thing. The second three is three urgent things I need to get done today. And the third three is three small maintenance tasks. These can be in your body, in your business, in your family, whatever it needs to be done.

So for example, you know, just taking today for me, the first three for me is we're doing a couple of hours of podcast recording today. That's the deep and most important thing that I need to get done today. Right. It's not the most urgent, probably not the most interesting either. There's more fun things I could be doing, although I do enjoy this, but it's shot five things. I needed to have a meeting this morning, which was done. need to get a proposal off, which is also done. And there's another thing that I have to do after this that I

Troye (14:31.562)
Hey, hey.

Mike Scott (14:43.928)
It's confidential, so I can't say it out loud. Three small maintenance tasks. I needed to work out this morning, which I've done. I needed to meditate this morning, which I've done. And this evening, I need to spend quality time with my kids. That's an example, right? And what this does is it prevents your day turning into one long reactive blur. I would really invite you to try it out. I'm just going to run through two quick little things, and we want to get into the next point of clarity. But yeah, jump in.

Troye (15:06.725)
Can I just say something about those three maintenance tasks things? Something I've heard or read recently and I'm fortunate I don't know where it came from about it. And the idea is clean your mess, clean up your mess. And this actually links in very well to overwhelm and we haven't prepared anything so Mike can segue this however he likes. But the idea is not only your environmental mess.

but your mental mess as well. And I've been thinking about this a lot, like I walk into my wardrobe and my clothes are lying everywhere and I'm like, clean your mess. I walk into my office, my desk should be tidy. But it's also kind of like those messy little tasks that you, I mean, sitting in taking up cognitive space that just need to get done, just get them done. And perhaps spending some time every week or every month or every day, just like cleaning up your mess, hanging up the...

Mike Scott (15:58.019)
Yeah, I mean, three things come to mind there. One is Jordan Peterson's like, own house in order thinking we weren't growled into that too much. The second thing that comes up is how you do anything is how you do everything. When I look at my wardrobe and it's messy, it makes my entire world feel messy. And then the third thing is we speak about this a lot, but your environment. So when you spoke about your wardrobe, your desk, your environment is a massive, massive part of your performance and overwhelm. So my, I'm obsessive about.

Troye (16:01.579)
it

Mike Scott (16:25.262)
cleanliness around me, not by nature to be clear. I'm actually a very messy person by nature, but it just freaks me out when I have mess around me. Okay, I want to jump through the next two things so we can keep moving at a good clip. Just very practical. Think about the one place rule, one place to store your tasks, not 10. One place to keep your notes, not five. One place to keep your plan. What do I mean by this? If you're using Apple Notes and Notion and Google Docs and Teams just to keep your notes, you're going to feel overwhelmed guys.

So pick one place for your notes, your actions, your tasks, your plan. Chaos in tools is going to equate to chaos in your mind. This is something you can control, internal locus of control. The last thing I want to say here very quickly, Harvard Business School has done some studies on this stuff. It seems like Harvard Business School has done studies on literally everything. But apparently these studies show that a deep commitment to a reflection on what you're doing

has a significant increase in productivity. They claim that it's more than 23 % increase in productivity just by reflecting on what you're doing. Why am I saying this? A core tenant of the GTD framework is a weekly reflection ritual. And it's one of the most consistently backed tools in high performing research. It's sort of got to the point that like, if there's just one thing that you do, do a weekly review because if you don't do it, you're pretty much guaranteed overwhelm. I want to tie a little bow on that and move to the next one. So the next one, Troy.

is clarity of priorities. know, when people, people not overwhelmed, they're unclear is a sort of statement that we want to start with here. And I remember you sharing something recently saying like, you went through goal setting processes, and then you're like, this is stupid. It doesn't do anything. So you stop doing it. And then you just sort of were like all over the place. And you kind of realized that it actually is a very important process to go through. So when you think about priority clarity, where does your brain go?

Troye (18:22.949)
Well, I think I like to think about priorities as I said it before today is like, what are you or what am I optimizing for? And I think if you know where you're going, you know what you're doing, then you can set up what the next important thing is. Cause how do you know what the next important thing is? How do you know what's key for you if you don't have priorities?

And it'll be interesting. I don't think I've talked to you about this too, because I say this a lot too. I see a lot of sort of high level management people in one of my other workplaces and they're often overwhelmed and they're getting stuff coming from their bosses all the time. And I keep on telling the tip I give to them is just to say, yes, I'll take that on. I'll sort it out, but I've got these things on my plate. What would you like for me to prioritize?

so I guess if you've, if you're not an employee or if you are, you'll be having a lot of these things coming in at you when you've got a boss. The nice thing is you can say to them, what do want me to prioritize? If you are the boss, you've got to know that an answer to that, you've got to know what's going on here. Cause I think an interesting think thought here is overwhelmed for yourself, but how easy is it to overwhelm somebody else? And

If you are thrashing, which I'm going to define as the opposite of having priorities and know where you're going, then the people around you are to start thrashing as well. And you're not going to only overwhelm yourself. You're going to overwhelm everybody. I think sometimes you do that to me all the time.

Mike Scott (19:51.672)
This was great.

Mike Scott (19:56.615)
that guy, and this is why I've got massive value out of things like Greg McEwen's essential intent. So that you can draw that question back to say, that's cool, Mike, but our essential intent for the quarter is X, and is this the highest leverage activity we can do in service of that essential intent? To bring it to a singular focus, right? Because if you are someone like me, I do get, you know, very distracted by the shiny objects. And to have this single priority,

at a quarterly level or an annual level is incredibly helpful to say, is this the best thing you can do to move towards that essential intent? And if it is, do it. If it's not, well, you kind of only have two options. Either it's don't do it or shift your essential intent.

Troye (20:41.221)
Well, this is what we were talking about the other day, actually, which I think would be cool to share is that I was sitting in our meeting and, as a startup, we've got so many things that we need to do for the ILN and it is two of us and we've got a, and this is someone that's helping us out, which is really cool. And we were just having a marketing chats and we had adding all of these things on that we wanted to do, wanted to do. And the time before that, we just had a chat about like we've done that we're doing the bloom thing that's and we were just putting on these KPIs all the time. And I was just thinking.

geez, like what the hell? And I said to Mike, hang on a second. We need to be very clear on how much time we have. And one of my favorite sayings is I work hard not to be busy. And I kind of said that to Mike and I think it worried him a little bit because he thought I was trying to say, I don't want to work very hard on this. But what I was actually talking about is we had all of these things that were really nice to do.

All of these things that are, and this is the hard thing, is really important for the business to grow and to deliver the value that it needs to deliver. But we just can't do it.

We don't have the time, the space, the capacity, the mental energy to do it. And so I was saying to Mike, listen, we need to make sure that we are not too busy on this. But what I meant is, which has only been clear now is that we need to be super clear on what our priorities are so we can focus on those. Is that how you read it?

Mike Scott (22:06.582)
Yeah, 100. No, not at the time. was lazy bastard. But but now I get it. Right. And again, not to be real, but that's where communication is so important. Just to be really clear about this guys and girls. That was a low energy, shitty meeting. Just to be clear, I think we might be talking about different meetings. Actually, the marketing meeting was fun, but we had another meeting where I left low. We weren't vibing. were like, it was shitty.

Troye (22:26.885)
Ahem.

Mike Scott (22:34.072)
This is a bit of a derailment, it's also not because I was actually feeling overwhelmed. And I think what's really important here is like, I called Proye afterwards, I messaged him or he called me or something. And I was like, Hey, like, are you okay? What do you need? What's going on? And we spoke through it. And Proye was like, no, I'm totally fine. It's not a problem. It's just, this is what's happening. And we spoke through this and it went from me telling myself a whole lot of stories about this to actually just understanding the situation and realizing we're saying the same thing, but from very, very different points of view. Cause we are extremely different.

And I don't want to talk too much about that, it's like, I guess why I'm talking about that is because overwhelm doesn't exist in a vacuum. It doesn't exist like by itself on your own. It's almost always got a lot to do with your surroundings, the people you're working with, clients, customers, vendors, staff, like whatever the case may be. And communication becomes an enormous part of getting through this because often overwhelm will come from a story we're telling ourselves about a situation, which isn't actually true.

for having you.

Troye (23:32.953)
And what you were doing was you were seeking clarity. So when you spoke to me afterwards, you were seeking clarity because of that sense of overwhelm. And I think that is the key here and sort of that linking process of bringing it all back in.

Mike Scott (23:36.974)
Yeah.

Mike Scott (23:47.737)
Yeah. So here's something to insert a nice little rule with some simple words, the rule of three. So if we just talk about a quarterly cadence here, never more than three quarterly priorities, as Jim Collins loves to say, if you have more than three priorities, you have none. Never more than three weekly big commitments and never more than three big daily priorities. Everybody thinks that they can multitask. sorry, man, like you can't, there's a bit of evidence we'll speak about later, but like you just cannot or you can.

but not well. Something we used to hear a lot in software development, I'm not a developer, but as a lot of you know, I was the CEO and co-founder of quite a big software development company. I love this phrase and the phrase is stop starting and start finishing. And this is how I want to close this little chapter is that overwhelm is often too many open projects, but not too much work. There's actually a thing called Miller's law, which goes into this, but it's like,

The more open loops we have, the more overwhelmed we're gonna feel, but that doesn't always equate it to too much work. So wherever possible, start finishing before you start starting. That's actually about what's happening in your brain and open loops and overwhelm. So cool. Next piece of clarity you want to seek is emotional clarity. So a statement that I wanna start with here, Troy, is a lot of overwhelm is a fear response, not a workload issue. So I mentioned this a bit earlier, Troy's the doctor, not me.

But if I can explain this, then any of you can understand it, because I'm not a doctor. Overwhelming triggers the amygdala, right? This is the threat detection system in the brain. This is fight or flight. It's the opposite of rest and digest and think. The stress response, the prefrontal cortex function, that is the part of the brain you want to be using when you're making business decisions and reason, et cetera. Daniel Goleman speaks about this a lot in emotional intelligence. So what am I talking about here?

How much of this Troy do you reckon is by our own making? When we're feeling overwhelmed, how much of this is like a story you're telling yourself about a situation versus the reality of the situation?

Troye (25:57.286)
Well, think it's all, I mean, I overwhelm is a feeling. think it's all going to be the story you telling yourself and the feeling that you're feeling on the day. And I think everyone knows this. Like some days you wake up and you're bulletproof. Everything comes your way. you just like, but you just like, you're just juggling the balls and you just smash it and you sliding through things and you finish the day and you're like, I've done so much. And other days you wake up and you stub your toe.

and all you want to do is go back to bed again and like, or nothing happens. And it just is the hardest day ever. So I think that this is all a feeling. And the way I often like to see these things is like, is the environment, the actual feeling and the story you're telling yourself, it's like a mental model that I have. And so if you're trying to fix a problem, like feeling overwhelmed,

You can fix the environment, which we've kind of spoken a little bit about today. So get your to do list sorted out, clean it up, tick off the things that are going to stress you out, do all those things in the environment. You can also manage the feeling, which is what you're talking about here, which is okay. that's, and by the way, the feeling sits by itself. Like it's in, it's your, it's a body feeling or a mind feeling, however you want to describe it, but it sits by itself and it's influenced. These things are all overlapped. They influence each other.

But managing the feeling in itself is just having a meditation process, going for a walk, eating well, making sure you're sleeping. That's directly impacting on the feeling. And then the story you tell yourself, I love this idea that 95 % of our reality is the story we tell ourselves. And I see it everywhere. The more I sort of think about this, the more I see it everywhere in the data, in the observations, everywhere.

and in this case, it's, I mean, it's just reframing the story. It's kind of, it's the idea of if I don't do this thing, then I'm useless. It's kind of that internal, narrator, and understanding and sort of being observant about the story you're telling yourself, is, is pretty cool. Having a coach can help a lot with that. So just pointing out that actually, you know what, that's might be just the story you're telling yourself.

Troye (28:16.675)
Yeah, I'll leave it at there because I also think you can weaponize the story.

Mike Scott (28:18.966)
I have a things there, right? There's the story we're telling ourselves, which is classic CBT, classic cognitive behavioral therapy, right? There's an opportunity there to break that loop to say, what are the facts of the situation? And usually those are actually quite difficult to articulate because you're just in this overwhelming, like, I'm so busy, that's a fact. Like, that's not a fact. So what are the facts? Then to actually say, what is the story I'm telling myself? You in my case, I'll try and share when I'm overwhelmed, the story I'm telling myself is I'm behind.

I don't have time to do what I have to do. That's going to make me fail and that's going to cause financial destitution. I go really deep into catastrophe like immediately, right? But then there's this opportunity to say, what might a more helpful story be? And a more helpful story might be, yeah, I do have a lot of work, but I've been in this place many, many times before and I'm still here. In fact, net, net, I'm better than I've always been.

whatever more helpful the story might look like to you. The sort of CBT, the cognitive behavioral therapy sort of principle here is that you can't override a story that you haven't named. So we have to stop and name the story first, right? You love this Troy, as you say, the story we tell ourselves. mean, Troy speaks about this in terms of performance on a bike, business, family, just the whole works. The second thing I heard you speak about Troy was a dysregulated body. You know, that once our nervous system is fired up,

and activated and your sympathetic nervous system is just taking over. You literally can't think properly because of this amygdala hijack. And what I also heard you say is that you've actually got to calm the body first. And there's ways to do this that are very easy. There's breathing techniques, there's cold exposure, there's all sorts of things, but the sort of thinking here is calm the nervous system, calm the body first and then.

get back to the thinking and this is completely within your control. know, Huberman's become quite famous for the physiological style we've spoken about that. It's a deep breath in, another sip of air in and then a long exhale up. What this is doing is it's shifting your nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic, which is calming the body so that the mind then follows. That's super practical to do, very, very difficult though. I think for me, this is like, I'm getting sort of overwhelmed thinking about this because of how deeply I live in this state.

Mike Scott (30:42.464)
so often. But what I can tell you is that every time I have the discipline to actually go and practice this stuff, I'm just so grateful to myself because then I do bring myself down and it reminds me like, hey, I've been here before, I will be here again, but I've got control of a bunch of this stuff. So it's been super useful for me. All right.

Troye (31:00.677)
I think one of the other stories to tell is like, I've got a thousand million things. It's just can be softer, a bit softer than that. It's like, I've got a thousand million things to do and I'm just feeling overwhelmed. bringing you in the story and often bringing it back down and just being okay, like let's settle down. What do I actually have to do? And you go, hang on a second. I've only got these five things to do. I can smash that out in an hour.

the environment's not actually making me overwhelmed, it's internal. also then understanding that the to-do list being 100 pages long is also not causing you overwhelm, it's the sense of I don't have control over my to-do list. And as you were saying before, I don't have control over the priorities. And all that takes is...

five minutes of bringing yourself into the presence, sitting down, as you said, breathing through, bringing down that autonomic nervous system and realizing actually out of all of those, if I get these three things done, it can help as well. The overwhelm is separate from what you actually have to do and I think that might be one of the keys of what you're talking about.

Mike Scott (32:17.806)
That's true, right? Because what overwhelms me, or necessarily overwhelm you, we can have the exact same workload and have very different experience of what's happening.

Troye (32:26.157)
And what overwhelms you on Monday won't be overwhelming on Tuesday.

Mike Scott (32:30.114)
because of what's happening at home or in your brain or your body chemistry, 100 % it's important. I mean, for me, I have zero overwhelm for about the hour after I have a coffee in the morning. It's just like, and then it just comes back five X, you know, at lunchtime. So, you know, the drugs you put in your body also make a difference, I'm sure. Okay, next form of clarity that you can think about here is decision clarity. So the statement here is overwhelm collapses when you decide.

Troye (32:40.773)
Hahaha

Mike Scott (32:57.912)
So really what we want to talk about here, this is very much James Clear thinking, this is BJ Fogg thinking, this is about tiny habits, atomic habits. where this anxiety is coming from is generally this very long time horizon thinking. I don't have control of the end result or what have you. If we can shorten that right back down to 12 hours, 24 hours, 10 minutes, one minute, and just focus on what's the next action to move this forward, the research shows that

Overwhelm is really about future uncertainty and that it's a key driver. So if we can shorter that decision horizon, we can shortcut that cycle. What are your thoughts on that,

Troye (33:37.03)
Yeah, I think that's an interesting sort of idea. My mind was actually going to like, that I've sound like a massive expert here and I'm just listening to you talking, but I actually like, I started this whole thing before we started recording saying, I don't know what the hell I'm going to be saying today because I don't know how to deal with overwhelm. I don't have a clarity on it. So yeah, I'm just interested to put all these points on paper.

Mike Scott (34:06.744)
Well, this is the thing, right? It's why I started this episode by saying, you know, let me be very clear. I'm going to say some stuff, but the reason I can say so much stuff is because of how much I struggle with this, not because I've solved it. Also just recognize to myself that this is the difference between average performance and extremely high performance for me is managing overwhelm because that's what, that's how my anxiety shows up. And then how it manifests for me as I get paralyzed.

So I just begin to procrastinate on everything. So there is a capacity conversation to have here, right? Around how much you're actually taking on. there's, there's, there's a couple of concepts that I want to sort of explore here that they're not big, but the one is something I was reading about when I was thinking about this podcast, which is behavioral economics shows that humans.

Frequently in fact almost systematically underestimate future commitments and how this shows up is look at your own life right now This happens so often with me and it happens so often with my clients So somebody will say to me that had literally happened to me yesterday somebody said to me Mike I want to do a deal where you basically become a shareholder of my business help me get the business to x percent xx point and then sell the business Now immediately when my brain went was that sounds awesome

I'm gonna do that because I'm gonna have a whole lot more time in the future. That's a mistake. What we need to be doing is going, would I take that on right now in my current situation? The answer is yes, fine. Probably makes sense to do it. But almost always the answer is gonna be no, I don't have time for that now. And we think we're gonna have more time for it later. And we think it's gonna be less intense than it's ever gonna be. So, you know, if you wouldn't take a thing on right now,

then you probably shouldn't agree to it later. Troy, what's your experience of the?

Troye (36:03.235)
Yeah, I think we should default to no. You hear all of this stuff about going, in fact, there's some really cool things I've just recently been listening to. The idea is having life rules. This is a Tim Ferriss thing where he goes, I'm not reading any books that were, I'm not really gonna be reading any books that were printed before 2020. I'm not reading any new books. And that sort of frees up a whole bunch of things for him. And then Derek Sivers was talking about simplifying his life.

And he's the hell yeah or no guy. And I actually think that generally the people that are listening to this audience and myself, I'm talking to myself here, it's just an epiphany that I've had right now is default to no. Like just don't do anything. Your default is no. And then you go, actually, but I want to say yes to this. And then you can start having that conversation with yourself.

What do you think about that? Because I haven't thought this through properly, but maybe it's an interesting idea.

Mike Scott (36:59.758)
See you.

Mike Scott (37:04.434)
I mean, people love to say defaults alone and everyone loves to say like the one common thing with billionaires is they all say no to just about everything. I always get, I get annoyed with that because the following statement has never been answered to me, which is like, sure, they say no to just about everything, but I'm more interested in how do they decide what to say yes to? And I think this comes back to the clarity conversation. I like, I'm not clear on this myself yet, but it's like,

If we decide that this year the most important thing is X, our essential intent is X, then maybe that just becomes the filter that unless it is directly contributing to the essential intent, then the default is no. But I don't agree with the default should be no.

Troye (37:43.526)
Yeah. And the other thing with default is no, is it's annoying to work with those people and you just piss the world off because you just like, Oh, come have some coffee. No. Oh, can you do this thing for me? No. And I was saying, I swooned to you just recently about like, just drives me crazy when I send emails out to people and, and, or send texts or something. And I just, like, you just don't hear from them. And so

Mike Scott (37:51.788)
Yeah.

Mike Scott (38:07.726)
It's a good tension, right? Because like, if I defaulted to know there is no ways I would be anywhere near where I am in life. Because there's different types of luck. And the only kind of luck that I think I have a chance of increasing is my surface area. I'm not a specialist. not ever going to be like deep and narrow. My luck is always going to be increased by surface area. And, you know, for me, if that was my view, I just

Troye (38:16.249)
Yeah.

Troye (38:24.335)
Hmm.

Mike Scott (38:36.846)
I mean, who knows what would have happened, but I have pretty strong conviction that I would have missed out on most of the successes that I've had in my life for me, but everyone's context is different. So, okay. I mean, you know, where have we gotten to? Cause we need to start wrapping up, know, overwhelm, overwhelm is not a flaw. It's you're not broken if you're feeling overwhelmed. In fact, welcome to the club of pretty much every high performing person I have ever come across. And bear in mind, I come across many, many people living high performing lives.

Troye (38:42.437)
Hmm.

Mike Scott (39:06.506)
It's an opportunity. It's a signal. It's a signal to say that your system is full and there are too many open loops and you are storing too many open tasks in your brain and your brain is not designed for that. It's designed for solving them, not storing them. So the antidote to this might be, because I haven't solved this yet, but the antidote to this might be clarity, clarity of mind, clarity of priorities.

clarity of systems, clarity of decisions and clarity of identity, which we're not going to get into too much today. We're going to do that again soon. That's sort of where my head is looping and closing this loop on Troy. Where does your head take you to to close this loop?

Troye (39:49.516)
We were talking about the story you tell yourself, and I think one of these is you've triggered this thought for me, which I love. I think overwhelm is the sign that you're working where you need to be working. Because if you're on the edge of performance, you're going to flip over into that working too hard all the time. And so just being aware of that and being able to have things in place to pull you back into the...

into where you can work at your best performance, you're going to be, if you don't feel overwhelmed, you're probably not on the edge. You're probably not going fast enough. You're probably not doing awesome, cool, amazing things. So actually when you feel overwhelmed, like this is the story, reframe it as like, okay, cool. I'm where I'm at and where I should be. Now let's fix this and bring it back a little bit. You don't have to bring it back too far. And then you can.

go again and you'll flip back into overwhelm again and then you'll come back and you're just playing on that edge. Because if you don't fall off, you're not going fast enough, probably, if that's where you're sitting.

Mike Scott (40:54.454)
I love that, you know, that reframe of self-awareness. Hey, I'm feeling overwhelmed. So cue story. this is what growth feels like. Growth never feels nice while you're growing, only afterwards. All right, Troy, good discussion as always. I'm to put you on the spot and ask you, what do you want the listeners to take away from this episode? What's the one succinct thing that you want the listeners to take away from this episode? Because probably they're feeling overwhelmed after us throwing a whole lot of words in their direction.

Troye (40:56.794)
Hmm.

Troye (41:02.789)
Hmm.

Troye (41:25.025)
The two, well, I've actually written note on my board, the antidote to overwhelm is clarity, which Mike said a little while ago, which I think is one of the things that triggered this off. And so I guess spend some time getting clear. December's a cool time to reflect on the year. January is an excellent time to think forward, but you don't have to wait for those months and just get clear on where you're going and think about the story that you're telling yourself.

That to me is the big thing. That's always the story. What about you, Mike?

Mike Scott (41:57.528)
Yeah. man. Yeah. I think the big thing that I'm taking from this, not what I necessarily want the audience to take from this is, is the using the feeling of overwhelm to cue the self awareness process. And that self awareness process is the same as what you said. It's, what am I telling myself right now? You know, I was feeling very overwhelmed this morning. So I sat down.

looked at my GTD list, looked at my calendar and realized I was telling myself a story that I'm not doing enough. That's what I was telling myself. But then I thought about this and I'm like, I've had a massively productive week and I've got a huge week next week and I actually don't have a lot to do today. And it just disappeared. It literally just disappeared. and you've just sort of process ties that for me, which is very useful. All right, we're out of time. It's been great. See you again.

Troye (42:53.605)
It's been real.