How to Be More Productive When You Feel Overwhelmed: 7 CEO Habits That Changed How I Work
How to Be More Productive When You Feel Overwhelmed: 7 CEO Habits That Changed How I Work
Have you ever had so much to do that you ended up doing… absolutely nothing? Not because you're lazy. Not because you don't care. Not because you don't have goals.You're just overwhelmed. You have emails to answer, content to create, laundry to fold, appointments to remember, bills to pay, people texting you, ideas bouncing around your head, and approximately 47 things you swore you were going to get done today. So what happens? You sit down. You open your phone "for five minutes." An hour disappears. Now you're frustrated with yourself because you haven't gotten anything done, which somehow makes you even less motivated to start. I've been there. And for a long time, I thought my problem was that I needed more discipline. I didn't. I needed a better system. The biggest shift for me happened when I stopped thinking about productivity as "How much can I get done?" and started thinking about it as:"How can I make my life easier to manage?" That is when I started approaching my life more like a CEO. Not because I suddenly had a corner office, a personal assistant, and someone bringing me green juice at 7 AM.
I started doing it because I realized that if I wanted to build a business, create content, take care of my responsibilities, pursue my goals, and still have a life, I couldn't keep relying on chaos, memory, and motivation.
Here are the seven CEO habits that changed the way I work.
1. Stop Keeping Everything in Your Head
One of the fastest ways to make yourself feel overwhelmed is to make your brain responsible for remembering everything. Think about how much information you're carrying around every day.
You might be thinking about a work deadline while remembering that you need to buy groceries, wondering whether you responded to an email, trying to remember an idea you had for your business, thinking about what you're making for dinner, and mentally calculating whether you have enough money in your account for the week.
And then somebody asks you:
"What's wrong?"
Girl.
EVERYTHING. 😂
Your brain was never meant to be your personal filing cabinet. When everything stays in your head, even small tasks can start feeling enormous because you're constantly trying to remember what needs to happen next. One of the simplest productivity habits I've adopted is externalizing my thoughts. If it needs to be remembered, written down, scheduled, purchased, completed, or revisited, it needs somewhere to live outside of my brain.
I like to start with a simple brain dump.
Write down everything that's taking up mental space without worrying about organizing it yet.
Then sort it.
DO: What actually needs action?
DECIDE: What requires a decision?
DELEGATE: What can somebody else handle?
DELETE: What doesn't actually need to happen?
LATER: What matters, but doesn't need today's attention?
Sometimes productivity isn't about doing more. Sometimes it's about realizing how much you don't actually need to do.
2. Stop Waiting for Motivation
Here's something I had to learn the hard way:
Motivation is unreliable.
Some days you wake up ready to conquer the world. Other days, getting out of bed feels like an executive decision requiring a board meeting. If your entire productivity system depends on you feeling motivated, you're going to have a very inconsistent system. Instead, I've learned to rely more on systems and routines. A system answers the question: "What happens next?"
You don't have to negotiate with yourself every morning. You don't have to wake up and decide whether you're going to work. You don't have to wait for the perfect creative mood before creating content. You create a routine that makes starting easier. For example, if I know I have content to create, I don't want to sit down and think: "Okay...what should I do today?" That decision should already be made.
The goal isn't to eliminate flexibility. It's to eliminate unnecessary decision-making. The less energy you spend figuring out whether you're going to do something, the more energy you have to actually do it. And honestly? Sometimes discipline looks a lot less glamorous than we think. Sometimes it's simply: "I said I was going to do this, so I'm going to start."
3. Stop Working in Chaotic Spaces
Now listen. I'm not about to tell you that your entire house needs to look like a luxury hotel before you're allowed to be productive. Because if that were the requirement, absolutely nothing would get done over here. 😂 But I have noticed a huge difference in how I work when my immediate environment is under control. Your physical environment can become another source of distraction. If your desk is covered in random papers, your laptop has 17 tabs open, your phone is constantly going off, and you're surrounded by things that need your attention, your brain has to process all of that before it can focus on the actual task. So I started creating a simple CEO workspace reset.
Before I start working, I:
Clear the immediate area around me.
Put away obvious distractions.
Get my water or coffee.
Open only what I need.
Decide what I'm working on first.
That's it. I'm not deep-cleaning the house. I'm creating a runway for my brain to land. And sometimes that's all you need. A cleaner workspace. A quieter environment. A little less visual noise. A clear first task. You don't need a perfect environment. You need an environment that supports the work you're trying to do.
4. Stop Treating Everything Like an Emergency
This one changed EVERYTHING for me. When you're overwhelmed, everything can start feeling urgent. The email feels urgent. The laundry feels urgent. The content feels urgent. The text message feels urgent. The random idea you had three minutes ago feels urgent. And suddenly you're spending your entire day responding to whatever is screaming the loudest instead of working on what actually matters. Being busy doesn't automatically mean you're being productive. One of my favorite CEO habits now is asking: "Does this actually need my attention right now?" Not everything deserves today's energy. I like to separate my priorities into four categories:
Urgent: Needs immediate attention.
Important: Moves my bigger goals forward.
Later: Needs to happen, but not today.
Not necessary: Doesn't need to happen at all.
And then I choose my CEO Top 3. Three things. That's it. I choose the three things that would make me feel like I moved my life or business forward that day.
Maybe it's:
Finish a client project.
Film one piece of content.
Pay a bill.
Everything else is secondary. This doesn't mean those other things aren't important. It means they don't all get to compete for the same amount of energy. Prioritization is productivity.
5. Stop Making Plans You Can't Actually Maintain
I LOVE an ambitious plan. Give me a fresh planner and suddenly I'm convinced I'm about to wake up at 5 AM, work out, journal, meditate, make breakfast, clean my entire house, create six pieces of content, answer every email, launch a product, read a book, drink a gallon of water, and somehow have dinner ready by 6 PM. Meanwhile, reality is looking at me like: "Ma'am."
The problem wasn't that I had big goals. The problem was that I kept creating plans around a version of myself who apparently had 48 hours in a day. I've learned that a good plan isn't the plan that looks the most impressive on paper. It's the plan you can actually maintain. Your productivity system has to account for your real life. Your energy. Your responsibilities. Your schedule. Your family. Your work. Your unexpected interruptions. Your bad days. Your good days. You need room to be human. That doesn't mean lowering your standards. It means creating systems that allow you to consistently meet them.I'd rather have a realistic plan that I follow 80% of the time than a "perfect" plan that makes me feel like a failure by Wednesday. A good plan should challenge you without setting you up to fail.
6. Start Planning Your Work Before You Start Working
One of the biggest productivity changes I've made is planning my work before it's time to do the work. Instead of sitting down at the beginning of the day and asking: "What am I supposed to be doing?" I want that question answered already. My planning happens in layers.
Weekly CEO Planning
At the beginning of the week, I look at the bigger picture.
What are my priorities?
What needs to get done?
What content needs to be created?
What commitments do I have?
What money-making activities need attention?
What can wait?
What do I need to prepare for?
This gives me a roadmap instead of seven days of guesswork.
Daily CEO Planning
Then each day gets narrowed down. I look at my schedule and identify:
My CEO Top 3
Then I break those priorities into actual actions; Because "work on my business" is not a task. "Write the first draft of my blog" is a task. "Work on content" is vague. "Film three reels from my content list" is actionable.
The more specific the task, the easier it becomes to start.
End-of-Day CEO Check-In
And then I review.
What did I accomplish?
What didn't happen?
What needs to move to tomorrow?
What worked?
What didn't?
What did I learn?
This has helped me stop treating unfinished tasks like personal failures. Sometimes a task didn't get done because I procrastinated. Sometimes it didn't get done because it wasn't actually important. Sometimes I simply planned too much. The answer isn't always "try harder." Sometimes the answer is "adjust the system." That's a very CEO way of thinking.
7. Start Running Your Life Like a CEO
This is the habit underneath all of the other habits. Running your life like a CEO doesn't mean pretending you're a Fortune 500 executive. It means taking ownership of your life instead of constantly reacting to it. A CEO looks at what's happening and asks:
What's working?
What's not working?
What needs to change?
What's the priority?
Where am I wasting resources?
What needs my attention?
What can I stop doing?
And I started asking myself those same questions. Not just about my business. About my time. My routines. My goals. My money. My energy. My relationships. My environment. My habits.
Because your life is a system too. And if the system isn't working, beating yourself up isn't going to fix it. You have to be willing to look at what's happening honestly and make adjustments. Sometimes the CEO decision is: Do more. Sometimes it's: Do less. Sometimes it's: Start. Sometimes it's: Stop. Sometimes it's: Delegate. And sometimes it's: Rest.
Rest isn't automatically the opposite of productivity. Sometimes rest is what allows you to return to the work with a clear mind instead of trying to force productivity out of an exhausted brain. The goal isn't to spend every waking moment "getting things done."
The goal is to build a life where the things that matter actually have room to happen.
Your 15-Minute CEO Reset
If you're feeling overwhelmed right now, don't try to reorganize your entire life today.
Start with 15 minutes.
Step 1: Empty Your Brain
Write down everything currently taking up mental space. Don't organize it. Just get it out.
Step 2: Sort It
Put each item into one of these categories:
DO
DECIDE
DELEGATE
DELETE
LATER
Step 3: Choose Your CEO Top 3
Ask: What three things would make today feel productive?
Choose three. Not thirteen. Three.
Step 4: Reset Your Space
Take ten minutes to clear the area where you're going to work. Remove distractions. Get what you need. Create a little breathing room.
Step 5: Decide Your First Move
Don't worry about everything else yet. Ask: What is the first physical action I need to take? Then do that.
Step 6: Check In Tonight
Before you finish your day, ask yourself:
What got done?
What didn't?
What needs to move?
What worked?
What needs to change tomorrow?
That's it. You don't need to completely reinvent your life tonight. You just need to create enough clarity to take your next step.
You Don't Need to Become a Productivity Robot
I think this is the part of productivity culture that gets missed sometimes. You don't need to wake up at 4:30 AM. You don't need a 37-step morning routine. You don't need to work 12 hours a day. You don't need to optimize every second of your existence. And you definitely don't need to feel guilty every time you rest.
You need a system that supports the life you're actually trying to build.
For me, that meant moving away from constantly reacting and toward intentionally planning.It meant getting things out of my head. It meant creating realistic schedules. It meant deciding what actually mattered. It meant learning that unfinished doesn't automatically mean failure. And it meant giving myself a structure I could return to even when life got messy. That's ultimately why I created my Billion Dollar Content Planner. I didn't want another pretty planner sitting on my desk collecting dust. I wanted a place where I could actually organize my goals, content, business, finances, routines, priorities, and everyday life in a way that made sense. Because we're not just making plans around here.
We're learning how to run our lives.
And if you're overwhelmed right now, start small. Clear your head. Choose your three. Make a plan you can actually keep. Then take the next step. That's CEO energy too.
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