Overwhelm in business: act on these tips to bring it back to simplicity

Does a lack of simplicity cause overwhelm in your business?

72% of small business owners regularly experience overwhelm in business due to their roles and responsibilities in their business. Business is already tough, so why make it tougher for yourself?

Every successful entrepreneur strives for simplicity in their business, to help overwhelm in business and burnout. Fortunately, how they achieve this is no secret – it is a matter of common sense and discipline.

Over the 10 years, I have coached businesses, overcomplicating the simplest tasks seemed to be a recurring problem amongst many of my business clients.

They could have implemented simple steps to reduce the overwhelm they were experiencing in their business. If overcomplicating business sounds like you, these top tips I am about to share with you will help you return your business to using simple strategies to eliminate everyday chaos for good.

Are you busy, or productive? Here is the difference:

Overwhelmed Busy Business Owners

  • You jump at every assignment and opportunity – this is where the burnout starts occurring.
  • You add more to your to-do list – This leads to overwhelm and stress.
  • You tend to juggle multiple assignments at once. You believe that multi-tasking will help get tasks done faster.

Productive Business Owners

  • You choose your activities and projects wisely You understand that you cannot do everything at once!
  • You value quality over quantity. Taking less means being more effective and strategic with what gets done.
  • You understand that multitasking will only slow you down! Instead, you focus on your task, one by one. This will help you to tick more off your list in the long run.

If being a busy business owner sounds like you, you need to reflect on what is wasting your valuable time in your business. Below are the key time wasters most business owners need to work on to reduce overwhelm in their business. Which of these resonates with you?

You have too many ineffective meetings = if this is something you struggle with, watch and implement the 4 principles of effective meetings.

You fail to work towards leveraging your business = the way to make running your business simple is to design and implement business systems that work without you. This free resource will show you how to implement these, to reduce overwhelm in business from working IN instead of ON your business.

You have a lack of awareness of how to manage, budget and save your precious time. Once you master this, you will find it much easier to generate profit in your business and will feel less overwhelmed because you are prioritising what matters. This free resource will help you to achieve this.

Reduce overwhelm in business by simplifying your language

Reading long, exhausting text gets boring, so change it! Unless all those words are essential to understanding the sentence, you do not need them. In addition, you do not want to overwhelm your audience with too many long, complex sentences. Just before you decide to post an article or send an email, ask yourself, ‘is there a faster, simpler way of communicating something?’.

There are many apps out there which are good to help you formulate more succinct sentences. Grammarly premium is one of them. Others include Writer, and Wordtune.

Do you have a detailed business plan, that is NOT in your head?

If I asked you right now, where is your business heading within the next 5, 10 and 15 years, could you answer it in detail?

If not, then your business plan is not detailed enough or even worse, it is just in your head. (A business plan that is not written down, is just an idea, not a plan). Overwhelm in business is caused by factors such as unexpected events and a lack of prioritisation.

An effective business plan would prevent feelings of overwhelm from happening because you can plan for unexpected events and stop worrying about things which are unnecessarily wasting your time.

Would you like a free detailed business planning template that clarifies what you aim to achieve, your purpose, and your mission? Get yourself a free copy here.

Let go of things that are not working to stop overwhelm in business

I get it, letting go isn’t easy. However, when you let go of overwhelming tasks that take too much time and can be easily simplified, do it. This can make a difference between a successful and a failing business. So how do you get started?

First, you should start making a list of everything you have going on in your business now. Now you can start placing an ‘X’ next to the items on your list you wish to eliminate. You can circle the items that need to be changed and leave the things that are working alone. This will enable you to start saying no to the things that drain your time, energy or money.

Be humble and not too hard on yourself

Be open to accepting help when you need it because teamwork equals success. Like Phil Jackson says, “the strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”

How much less overwhelming will your business life be if you share the workload and delegate tasks to your team?

Also, the best way to kill your business and creativity is by saying ‘I know.’ You do not know everything, so why not be more open to different perspectives and ideas?

Having a simple business, is in fact, simple. That doesn’t mean it is easy though.

If you, or anyone you know, is experiencing overwhelm in business and need support with getting back on track, contact us at 01626798007 or send an email to stevegaskell@action.com.

If you would like to see the positive changes, you can see some phenomenal results my clients have achieved here.

Remember, keep it simple business owner. Before making a decision, ask yourself these two questions:

1) What is the simplest way to achieve my aim? 2) How can I answer these questions and apply a process with simplicity?