As one-person business owners, we do it all. There’s nobody to delegate to so things get piled for time to get to them. The “Round Tuit” was invented for people like us. But the stress inherent in rarely being able to feel a task has been completed and celebrate it’s conclusion is also huge. Business overwhelm is a common complaint among solopreneurs. It’s so easy to be stuck in a rut of working endless hours to get something done and yet having less and less to show for it except deep bags under your eyes and a bigger waist because you never leave your desk.

There’s so much to be done, the tasks become so huge, we’re to intellectually and emotionally exhausted to tackle them in the first place and around we go again.

How do you cope with business overwhelm? Do you just take a day and virtually put a “gone fishing” sign on your door?

That works for the business side, but when you’re feeling frustrated and in over your head, it also creeps in on the personal side as well. If you’re lucky enough to have a relationship and/or family, how do you think it affects them to have you stressed and distracted and just plain missing when you’re too busy thinking how to make the business thrive to concentrate on having those closest to you thrive, too.

It is possible to balance the two sides , but it won’t happen until you choose which one has priority. One side has to. There’s no right or wrong with the choice, it just has to be made.

Once you choose which side, personal or business, is the higher priority for you, then it becomes easier to handle the tasks that come your way.

For instance. Ani is a single mother who has started a business to attain her ultimate goal of financial security and more time to spend with her child. When we first started talking, she loudly declared that her priority was her child and his well-being. On further digging, we found that although she felt she “ought to” have that be her priority, she felt the business was more important at this time since her son was young and she could take care of his minimal needs easily, but the business was her ticket away from the 9-5 j.o.b. she worked and hated so she poured all her extra time and all her energy into it; feeling guilty that she wasn’t putting her son first.

What we were able to discern after several sessions was that by putting the business first, and accepting that she was making that her priority, she freed herself from the guilt and still was taking care of her son’s needs. She was focusing whenever she could on the business while he did not require her time and attention so that when he did she could be there for him.

Here are some tips to help with the overwhelm:

Disconnect Your Oughta-Pilots(tm) – Stop beating yourself up because you “ought to” or “should” be doing something for the business when you’re watching tv at night or just “vegging out” playing a computer game. You can’t be on the clock 24/7. It isn’t effective, it isn’t wise and it isn’t healthy. Your brain needs a distraction once in a while.

Take time to write out a detailed to-do list. Are there parts of tasks that can be broken up? Can you get something done like returning emails or making a phone call during a lull?  I have a practice I learned a long time ago in a time management class. Write your daily to-do list in the morning. Work on it all day. Then 15 minutes before the end of your day, take time to go through the incomplete tasks. Separate the tasks by priority and move the hit items that did not get completed either to the next day or if you’re waiting for something else to happen to continue with the item, move it a few days out. Then when you get in the following morning, you know what you have to do from the previous day before you write down all the tasks for the present day. Also with having a detailed to do list, you can turn your to-do’s into Ta-DAHs! and have visual proof that you’ve accomplished something.

Don’t be too proud to ask for help. A spouse, a child, or a friend can come help out sometimes. I can remember when I was younger  being asked to staple pages together for my mother. I thought it was fun and loved feeling like I was helping. On occasion when my daughter was small and I needed to concentrate on a particularly involved project, I asked my neighbor if she could watch my daughter afterschool and feed her dinner if necessary. I returned the favor when my neighbor needed a night off.

All sorts of things can be worked out once you can rid yourself of the overwhelm. Keep telling yourself that there are only 24 hours in the day and that you created your business to give you more freedom to enjoy them.

Set business hours. No one knows more than I how difficult that is, but you’ll thank yourself in the long run. When you were working for someone else, you would leave your work at the end of your day knowing it would be waiting for you when you got back in the morning, right? Well, there’s also a huge reward for doing it in your own business, too. You’ll be able to make plans to socialize, to eat dinner away from your keyboard and just enjoy your night.  (And just think, when you run across someone who is talking about the latest episode of a show on tv, or a movie, you’ll actually have something to contribute to the conversation instead of being so one dimensional and business focused all the time.)

Once you feel more in control and that you have more options than being chained to your desk, I guarantee you will feel more energized, more hopeful and less stressed about your business.