Overwhelmed? Here's how to fix it

Modern life is exhausting. Here, Guardian writers explain what they have given up to make space in their schedules and lives from social media to makeup to news addiction. Then, readers and experts offer tips on how to navigate the demands and pressures we all face. First, Emine Saner examines why we are so overwhelmed

- ALLAN SANDERS

THERE IS A REASONABLE CHANCE you are reading this while doing one or more other thing-perhaps switching between work emails and social media, or using it as a way to put off today's gargantuan to-do list. We are living through an era in which there are so many demands on us, whether it's the trivial - endless notifications from your most annoying WhatsApp group - or more serious, such as caring responsibilities or financial or work stresses. If you are feeling overwhelmed, you are not the only one.

Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist and author of The Key to Calm, says: "I'm getting a lot of it in my clinic." Some people feel paralysed, she says, and can't decide what to do next. "A lot of my clients say they have trouble finishing any one thing, so that leaves them feeling more and more ineffective."

It's demoralising, "and it's not their fault". It's not even the fault of the tasks, she says, which don't necessarily seem, to an outsider, that demanding. Blair thinks it's an issue of sheer volume, adding: "I think our attention span has already been challenged by using screens so much." The pandemic hastened this, but it didn't invent overwhelm. "The problem is managing modern life."

Although they all seem completely calm and composed, later it strikes me as fitting that every one of the experts I speak to for this piece is juggling multiple demands - one calls at night while she is preparing for a trip to a family wedding the next day, another answers the phone between breaks at a conference, another speaks early in the morning with the sounds of family life in the background.