A serious, but largely overlooked, problem in philanthropy is feeling overwhelmed. You know what I'm talking about. You might have woken up this morning feeling overwhelmed by the day ahead of you. You could feel overwhelmed right now. It might be because the ideas you're reading about in this book are triggering changes you want to make, but you aren't yet sure how to make them. Or you might be overwhelmed because you haven't gotten around to scheduling the dental appointment, dermatology check-up, and half dozen other health appointments you should probably make.

What is overwhelm? According to wellness writer Michelle Rees, “Overwhelm happens when the sheer volume of thoughts feelings, tasks, and stimuli in our daily environment shifts our brain and nervous system into a reactive, stressed state.”¹ The result? Easy things become hard and hard things become impossible.

I felt that way recently while trying to finish up work, pack for a long weekend, take my daughter back-to-school shopping, and register my kids for dance class—all before noon!

In addition to zapping our creativity and problem-solving skills, overwhelm creates a relentless cycle of inactivity. We stop in our tracks. We don't know the right path forward, which step to take, or even what direction to choose. Overwhelm costs money, drains time, and suffocates talent.

Think feeling overwhelmed is not a big deal for philanthropists? Think again.

Think of the woman who is so overwhelmed with managing her family foundation after the death of her husband that she cannot even consider potential solutions, such as transitioning the foundation into an easier-to-manage donor-advised fund, or retaining a consultant to help her run it. The foundation falls into disarray, fails to make its 5% payout, and triggers tax penalties.

Think of the CEO of a philanthropy-serving organization who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of firing her communications director, because she's worried that she won't have any communications support during a major change in the organization's strategy. She tolerates the communication director's poor performance and bullying behavior, which results in a toxic work environment, low staff morale, low productivity, and poor communications. As a result, two top performers leave in frustration.

Six Ways Philanthropists Are Overwhelmed

In my experience, philanthropists experience six distinct types of overwhelm. As you read the list, jot down how many of these you've experienced in the past year.

1. Are you overwhelmed by the world's problems? The world holds more than 7.5 billion of us. Sometimes it feels as though we face unlimited challenges. Climate change, income inequality, influenza pandemics, food insecurity, war … just to name a few! Many funders feel overwhelmed by the sheer size and depth of such problems.
2. Are you overwhelmed finding a cause to support? Some people come to this work with a clear passion and focus. Their child had brain cancer and they want to prevent the disease from striking other families. For the rest of us, however, it can be overwhelming to determine which issue to tackle. We care about so many needs: domestic violence or mental health? Climate change or inequality? Is it better to double down on one issue or spread our contributions across a wide range of causes? There are no right or wrong answers, but the choices can daunt us. Toss in trying to involve the wildly different interests of your adult children or the predilections of your company's CEO, and you start to feel like a deer in the headlights.
3. Are you overwhelmed by choices? Once you know which causes you want to support, you still need to decide how to support them. There are an estimated 10 million nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide.² That's a lot of potential grantees to choose among! And your choices are not only numerous but often they are big: Determining whether to let go of employees who don't fit your new strategy. Identifying the most effective approach to increasing access to drinking water without inadvertently harming people. It's common to feel overwhelmed by guilt or anxiety (or both) in the face of such decisions.
4. Are you overwhelmed by taking action? You've set goals and developed a plan. It's smooth sailing from here to make it all happen, right? Wrong. At this stage, many funders are sitting on a plan with five goals, ten objectives, and four cross-cutting themes. Strategies are getting mixed up with tactics, everything feels like a priority, and no one knows what they are supposed to do next. They are overwhelmed. Their response? To “busy” themselves in meetings, calls, and emails that accomplish little.
5. Are you overwhelmed by change? We all think change is great … until it happens to us. You might be managing wealth you've recently inherited, recovering from the surprise outcome of an election, or taking on your first CEO role. When we change, we are forced to let go of habits we are comfortable with. We step into the unknown, and often into areas we've tried to avoid. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and disoriented by change, and unsure how to respond.
6. Are you overwhelmed by lack of time? This one's a doozy. Most people think they don't have time. You are probably saying to yourself, “OK, Kris, I get all this, but I have no time to deal with it. Just look at my calendar—I'm booked solid for the next three months. My inbox is overflowing. And I have that big event coming up!” I understand. When I started writing this book, I wondered how I would fit “write two hours a day” into my calendar. But the belief that we have no time is the easiest culprit to resolve. You have more control over your time than you realize, especially if you stop mindlessly giving it away to people and issues that are not your top priorities. Meetings don't need to last an hour, strategic planning need not take a year, and you don't need to embark on a multistate learning tour. Compare your calendar against your top priorities. You'll be stunned to realize how little of your time is allocated to what's most important. Read Chapter 10, “You Are Fast,” to learn how to increase efficiency in your life and in your giving.

Feeling overwhelmed is delusional because you don't recognize the damage it's causing you and your philanthropy. You don't know how much control you have to reduce overwhelm. And you aren't doing anything about it. Overwhelm is holding you back from changing the world, and you're allowing it to do so.

Let's look at what's contributing the feeling of overwhelm. As you read, make a note of when you take one of these actions. Also, pay attention to how much is within your control.

Eight Ways You Contribute to Feeling Overwhelmed

As odd as it seems, overwhelm often comes more from our minds than from the physical world. That is, we may indeed have a boatload of tasks to take care of, but how we view our situation has a lot to do with whether we feel helplessly overwhelmed or appropriately busy. Our thoughts tip the boat in one direction or the other.

Here are eight ways you unintentionally contribute to a feeling of overwhelm:

1. You wear it like a badge of honor. When asked how you are, how often do you respond, “I'm busy”? I'm guessing fairly often. I'm guilty of this, too. In fact, you might even boast about how busy you are. It might be your nonstop travel schedule, your upcoming board meeting, the gala you are planning, or juggling work and kids during the summer.

   But being busy and feeling overwhelmed is not a badge of honor. Your booked schedule is not proof of your importance. It's probably proof of your exhaustion! In fact, keeping busy might be a form of procrastination. Instead of stuffing our calendars, we need to create more unstructured time to relax, think, and do nothing. In fact, studies show that periods of being idle makes us more creative and better at problem solving.³

   The “busy brag” is also contagious and can negatively impact organizational cultures. Netflix and Virgin Group have begun combating this by offering employees unlimited vacation time. Not only does this help them attract top talent, it neutralizes a culture of “busy bragging” even as employees are still held accountable for results.⁴ Carl Richards, author of The Behavior Gap, offers this practical advice: “Take the ‘busy’ badge, throw it in the trash, and replace it with one that says, ‘rested.’”⁵

2. You set unrealistic expectations. One way we do this is to set up a series of tight deadlines with no real plan for meeting them. Another example is scheduling relentless back-to-back meetings, with no time to think or follow up on what we agreed to do. A colleague told me his foundation has a culture of double-booking meetings: For example, you might schedule an hour-long meeting with a colleague to discuss an important matter, only to discover that you actually have just 10 minutes because she booked another meeting at the same time. Think of how much overwhelm that practice is causing!
3. You don't have a strategy, much less a plan. It's easy to feel overwhelmed when you don't know what you are trying to do and you don't have a plan. You end up engaging in lots of disconnected activities. You get pulled in different directions and jump on too many charitable bandwagons. As a result, you feel overwhelmed by a growing list of obligations, and you get frustrated that you aren't making headway on any of them. You need a strategy to help you prioritize which tasks to do when—and which to ignore, at least temporarily.
4. You don't have systems in place. Perhaps you don't use basic systems and processes to help you conduct your work. As a result, you're frequently late and overwhelmed while completing routine activities. The systems you need might be simple, such as clearing your email inbox each day, or complex, such as installing a new grants management system.

   One family foundation trustee described the chaos her family experienced without a grantmaking process. The board had no process or schedule for reviewing proposals or approving grants. This was intentional, because they thought the lack of a grantmaking system would allow them to be nimble and make quick decisions. In fact, the opposite was true. “We were all over the place. … As proposals rolled in, we had to drop what we were doing and respond. We felt like we were being really responsive. But really, we were just disorganized. On one hand we'd say we needed to hurry, but then we'd reschedule board meetings, and funding decisions got postponed for six months.”⁶

5. You don't invest in technology that could help you. There are myriad ways that investments in technology make us faster, more effective, and less exhausted grantmakers. This might include online grant applications, employee volunteer systems, and giving platforms. Technology investments can also help our grantees to scale up their solutions.

   For example, Business of Good Foundation (Ohio) supports mentoring to help first-generation, low-income college students persist to college graduation. It does this by supporting America Mentors, which uses MentorcliQ technology on a smartphone or tablet to match students with mentors and enable guided interactions between these pairs, fostering strong relationships through timely and relevant conversations. All for free. The outcome? More than 3,000 students have been mentored and graduation rates increased from 8% in 2011 to 80% in 2017. The foundation hopes there will be a time when all first-generation college students have mentors.⁷

6. You don't invest in people who can help you. You don't need to go it alone. There are plenty of people with expertise who can help you—you just need to engage them. Who am I talking about? Virtual administrative assistants, speech writers, communications experts, family offices, strategic advisors, and event planners. Employees who could handle work you don't have the time or expertise to do. I'm also talking about people who can handle non-work-related tasks for you, such as mowing your lawn, cleaning your apartment, and preparing your taxes.

   Why invest in outside help? I can think of at least three reasons:

   First, you will free up your time and brainpower to do what you are best at. If you're best at engaging employees in meaningful volunteer opportunities, why would you spend your time on data entry?

   Second, you can always improve. Why be good when you can be great? Why be great when you can be fabulous? A trusted advisor can help you prioritize your goals and hold you accountable for meeting them.

   Third, when you invest in people who are smarter and better at an activity than you are, you might find that the quality of your organization's work improves dramatically. After all, if you have an entire group of people attacking projects from their own individual strengths, things start getting done quickly.

7. You don't take care of yourself. It's easy to feel overwhelmed when you run yourself ragged. We often forget how much our physical, mental, and spiritual health contributes to our success. Does any of this sound familiar? Lack of sleep, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating, and not enough time spent with the ones you care most about—family, friends, pets, and yourself. Not to mention that this can contribute to serious problems such as diabetes and depression. The conventional wisdom is true: You can't take care of others until you take care of yourself.
8. You believe feeling overwhelmed is normal. You've felt so harried for so long that you've come to expect it. You've forgotten what it's like to feel calm and on top of things. In fact, you wonder whether you ever felt this way. If you've gotten to this point, you need an intervention—and quickly! This is especially challenging and insidious when those around you are suffering the same problem. When your colleagues, family members, and friends constantly describe being behind, busy, and stressed, you feel pressured to feel the same way.

What amazes me about the list above is that everything on it is usually within our power to change—or at least influence. In many ways, we enable and facilitate our own feelings of overwhelm.

Of course, overwhelm is also triggered and exacerbated by experiences and traumas beyond our control. You might live in a community experiencing a natural disaster or violence, experience racism or homophobia, have a serious health problem, or have lost a loved one. There are a lot of real-world factors that can overwhelm us, whether they come from our workplace, community, national politics, or personal identity and experience.

When oppression, physical health problems, mental health concerns, and similar major life issues are involved, it is important to take action. Counseling, support groups, religion, peer groups, and family can be powerful sources of strength. So too can volunteering, community organizing, and participating in social change activities to eradicate the situations that cause these types of traumas.

Sometimes the contributors to overwhelm are powerful and constant. Other times they are more subtle. Regardless, they all have an effect. Although we might not be able to remove some of these at their source, we can at least try to mitigate them. This can partially be accomplished by some of the techniques discussed in this book.