One of the biggest victims of you being overwhelmed is your integrity.

Hundreds of emails, text messages, social media posts fly by you each day.

When your human brain is forced to continually toggle between activities, you:

• have trouble focusing
• are more likely to make errors, and
• may even experience a bottle-neck in your brain when it feels like all systems are shutting down and you need to re-boot.

If you can’t function, how can you honor your commitments and be responsive in a way that mirrors your best intentions?

And yet your success and well-being depend on you operating at a high level of functionality. Your colleagues need you to answer their questions so they can move the project forward. Your customers will take their business elsewhere if they don’t receive quality service. Your children will not understand when you fail to follow through on your latest promise.

Your integrity is at stake hundreds of times a day. An impossible situation.

So what to do?

First, admit you are a human and not a robot. Tell yourself and everyone around you that you are doing your best.

Second, simplify. Stop saying yes to more. Start saying thank you for the invitation or the opportunity, but no thank you to splitting your attention and energy in even more directions.