Instant Genius - How to beat burnout in an increasingly fast-paced world

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

These days, it can be easy to feel like we have too much to do and too little time to do it in. This can lead to many of us feeling overwhelmed, or in extreme cases, can lead to burnout – a state of profound physical, mental and emotional exhaustion that can have far-reaching consequences for both our mental and physical health. So, what measures can we take to regain control of our lives if we are feeling overwhelmed, and what techniques can we employ to ensure we never reach this state of crisis in the first place? In this episode, we’re joined by Claudia Hammond, a visiting professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Sussex and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind, to talk about her latest book, Overwhelmed, Ways to Take the Pressure Off. She tells how the rise of perfectionism is leading to more and more of us feeling overwhelmed, why we all tend to be our own worst critics, and shares a number of evidence-based tips we can all employ to make our loads feel a little bit lighter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear a world-leading scientist and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus. These days it can be easy to feel like we have too much to do and too little time to do it in. This can lead to many of us feeling overwhelmed, or in extreme cases can lead to burnout, a state of profound, physical, mental and emotional exhaustion that can have far-reaching consequences for both our mental and physical health. So what measures can we take to regain control of our lives if we are feeling overwhelmed,

and what techniques can we employ to ensure we never reach this state of crisis in the first place? In this episode, we're joined by Claudia Hammond, a visiting professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Sussex, and presenter of BBC Radio Falls All in the Mind, to talk about her latest book, Overwhelmed, Ways to Take the Pressure Off. She tells us how the rise of perfectionism is leading to more and more of us feeling overwhelmed, why we all tend to be our own worst critics, and also shares a number of evidence-based tips we can all employ to make our loads feel a little bit lighter.

So welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. Oh, you're welcome. So today we're talking about your latest book, Overwhelmed, Ways to Take the Pressure Off. So we're talking about the feeling of being overwhelmed, which most people listening will have had an experience of when things maybe have got a little bit too much for them. But what actually do we mean by the feeling of being overwhelmed? Yeah, in a sense, it's that there is ever more to do, that there is less time in which to do it, that we might feel we can't cope with that.

You know, it's not a medical term, but it is very much an everyday term that people use. And the extreme version of that is burnout, where people are physically and mentally and emotionally exhausted and may find it difficult to sleep and feel hopeless and feel that they dread the day and that they're feeling that they're doubting themselves and can't focus. And sometimes in particular with burnout, there can be a real feeling of a loss of empathy for others and that it's just too hard to focus on anyone else. And it can involve anxiety and depression as well. But at the more everyday end, it is just feeling that there is just, there is just too much going on and it is just too difficult. So, you know, like, as you say there, we've all got a lot going on. But is there a sort

of tipping point that we can recognize where things have actually gotten too much, you know, not just like we're a bit anxious, we're feeling a bit, you know, a bit tired, etc. You know, is there a threshold that can be reached? I think there is. And I think burnout would be that threshold. And so if you are, you know, absolutely completely exhausted in every way and almost can't carry on, and just feel that you are going through the motions and not really able to give your attention to anything, and people may by then be experiencing symptoms of depression and feeling that nothing gives them joy anymore of the things that used to, or that they're feeling so anxious that they are not able to do things anymore, that they're stopping doing things in everyday life that they would do.

Then I think it's gone across that tipping point from everyday overwhelm, if you like, which a lot of us experience a lot of the time to something more serious and something where that has then sort of tipped over into a mental health issue where people may benefit from getting professional help. So let's have a look at what you talk about in the book, some sort of advice that we can do tips or measures that we can take to avoid this sort of thing. So there's lots of different in the book, there's lots of different chapters explaining different, the sort of different small little bits that, you know, it's sort of kind of

can be death by a thousand cuts, can't it? This sort of thing. So you talk first about acceptance. So this is really fascinating. You know, and there's more to this than we might first think. You know, we're all busy. Maybe we've got demanding children, elderly parents that we have to look at to, you know, when you reach a certain age, stressed out partners. So what do you mean by this concept of acceptance, you know, how can we use that to help us? Yeah, so there are different types of overwhelm. In a way, there's kind of almost two different types. One is, first, there are the external pressures like the children you need to look after or the, as you say, the parents or the demands of your job and what your boss demands from you. There are those external pressures. And if those are a problem, then it's about finding some kind of strategies to cope with that pressure.

And I talk about lots of those. But some of these pressures are coming from within. Some of them are demands we put on ourselves to be a certain way, to, you know, look a certain way, to improve ourselves. all the time to be, I don't know, you know, learning a new language as well as getting fit and doing, you know, ever better in your job and then cooking amazing meals if somebody comes around and kind of demanding perfectionism from ourselves in all realms. And, you know, humans have survived this long by specialising. You know, I can't build an electricity substation, for example, but I can do other things instead. We all do different things. I maybe can't do something as useful as that, but we do

different things. And humans have been very successful by specialising. And yet there almost seems to be a thing now where we are expecting ourselves to be absolutely brilliant at everything. And so some of that pressure is coming from within. And one thing we know is that perfectionism is on the rise. And particularly among younger people, if you look at studies of younger people in the 1990s, compared with younger people now, a higher proportion of them are suffering from extreme perfectionism in a way and demanding of their selves that they are absolutely perfect at everything. And so where acceptance comes in is that we can't be perfect at everything and we need to start accepting ourselves for what we are. If not, we are putting more and more pressure on ourselves to excel at absolutely everything.

And we just can't do that. Yeah. So one thing that you also talk about, which I thought was very interesting, was the kind of the to-do list. So I'm an absolutely obsessive list maker. I do with everything, even in my home life. On the weekend, I'll have a whole list of things. In a way, I think that helps me. But is that also putting unnecessary pressure on people who do this sort of thing? Yeah, I think so. There's lots of evidence that to-do lists are helpful.

And the reason they are helpful is that they allow you to cognitively offload, that you haven't got to carry on holding all these things in your head and thinking, I must remember to do that and I must remember to do that because there is a cost to doing that. There's a kind of tax on your brain of doing that, that it's aware that there's something you need to be remembering. And so to-do lists allow you to offload that cognitively, that it is there on the list.

You don't need to worry about forgetting about it anymore. But they can feel oppressive if you demand of yourself that you must get through your to-do list and if you see anything being left on your to-do list as oppressive. So what I'm recommending there is that there's nothing wrong with having the to-do list, but we need acceptance again. We need to accept that our to-do list will never end. So one day you may finish it.

You know, maybe you will this weekend do the things you need to do. But at the end of Sunday, on Monday, some other things will have added themselves to your to-do list. You know, these demands on us don't just end. Things need to be done. And in a way, a to-do list is a sign of a busy life with lots going on. That could be a good thing. And so I think we need to accept our to-do lists will be with us. and that they, that lots of those things on that list are either nice and enjoyable in themselves

or they lead to something nicer in the end. You know, maybe you've got things you need to book and sort out, which will lead to nice experiences in the end, even if it's a bit of a chore doing those in the first place. So I think it's fine to have the list, but we need to accept that it won't go away and that that's okay. And in one way, this cut might sound a bit sort of depressing to think, oh, my to-do list will never end. And I, you know, I even call one chapter your to-do list will never end. But it really is okay. It's just a, it's an aid memoir. It's a way of helping you get through things. And so we need to not be oppressed by it and accept that it is there and that that is, can be a useful thing. And particularly useful, you know, there's research from the States

showing that doing a to-do list just before you go to bed is particularly useful. And you can, you know, that could be written on paper. You could write it on your phone if you can then resist looking at everything else as well and looking at anything that might stress you out, like an email demanding you do something. But people got to sleep significantly more quickly. The ones who wrote a long list actually got to sleep an average of 15 minutes faster than other people because of this process of cognitive offloading and letting our brains off, if you like. You might think, oh, that's the worst thing I want to do is make a to do list before I'm about to go to sleep because then I'll worry about everything. But in fact, the opposite is what happens. You've offloaded it.

That's for tomorrow and that's fine. And that's another day. So let's say we've written one of these lists then. Are there any tactics that we can use to sort of manage it better? So personally speaking, so say, I don't know, I've got a big DIY job, I've got to make a wardrobe. Typically, I mean, I might be sort of ratting myself out of here, but before I do that, typically I'll clean the entire place first. Of course. And I'll just keep putting it off and putting it off. Is that a good thing to do? Yeah. I mean, procrastination is an interesting one and it's, you know, just so common. Many of us do this a lot of the time. And what's interesting about the research on procrastination.

It's a really interesting research from Fuchsia, Sirwa at Durham University, suggesting that it's not so much a time management problem. People will often think, oh, I don't manage my time properly, I procrastinate. But sometimes it's an emotion management problem. So it may be, I don't know, you may be brilliant at DIY. It may be you're afraid you're covered, your wardrobe won't work that well and that it's going to be difficult. Or, you know, maybe you can do it very easily.

But with some of these things, it is an emotion management problem. We're putting off the thing that we're worried about because we're worried we won't like doing it or we're worried that we'll fail at doing it or that we might make some of the wrong decisions in there. And so we put off doing those things or we put off, you know, sending the email that's a bit tricky that someone's asked us to do something and we want to we want to not do it. But it's tricky saying no to people. And so we just put off answering, which is actually more annoying for the recipient that we haven't got around to just saying no if we can't do the thing. And part of the reason is that at that moment, if you put off doing your wardrobe and do something else, temporarily you feel better because you're not doing the difficult thing anymore. You're doing a nice thing and you're putting some washing on and that's simple.

But obviously in the long term, particularly when it's something really important, like, I don't know, you're revising for exams or doing some work, a project you're supposed to have done at work or doing something, you know, really important that you need to do, like, you know, looking for a different flat to live in, those sorts of things. then that can start to have consequences. And so the problem is, one of the problems is that we're convinced that our future selves will do better in the future. You know, we tend to research shows, we tend to believe that we'll have more spare time in the future. And that will be more organised versions of ourselves in the future.

And I don't want to disappoint people, but you're not going to be a more organized version of yourself probably in the future. It's going to be like now. And so maybe you need to take on doing fewer things and expect less of yourself. and to forgive yourself your procrastination before. There was a study with students who didn't revise for their exams and didn't do very well in their exams. And they found that those who did forgive themselves that and make a plan about how to do it next time

were actually more likely to revise than those who beat themselves up about it and made a plan how to do it next time. So again, kind of acceptance of yourself as imperfect, but trying hard is the way to go here. What you mentioned there is expectation. So with these, if we make these sort of, well, we have ideas about ourselves, how we think we are, how we think we should act, how we think we should be, we make these lists. And then if it's not fulfilled, if it isn't meeting your expectations, you can get a deep sense of frustration with that.

Should we just all be a little bit easier on ourselves? Oh, totally, totally. Self-compassion is huge in all this. And there is so much research showing how important self-compassion is. People who are not self-compassion are at higher risk, for example, of developing depression later on because they beat themselves up so much about things and then start to feel very bad about themselves and feel hopeless about themselves and assume that when they make one mistake, this means that they're an idiot, that everyone at work say we'll always think they're an idiot and we'll remember this forever.

And we're often much harder on ourselves than we are on our friends. and I have this kind of, you know, would you say this to a friend test? If yourself was walking up the street and it's your friend, would you, you know, beat them up about the fact that they didn't get what they were going to get done done? You wouldn't. You'd say, well, you tried your best. Or if they'd made a mistake at work, you'd say to them, well, everyone will forget this in time. We all make mistakes.

People will accept this. Everyone's not going to think you're an idiot forever because you're going to do something good next. And that's going to, it's going to all be all get forgotten. We wouldn't say to them, yes, you are an idiot and everybody else thinks that and you always will be. So it is this kind of, we are so much meaner to ourselves than we are to other people. And so, yeah, I think self-compassion is really key. And that, yeah, you won't always get to the end of what's on that list. And you won't, often we really overestimate, you know, as a thing called the planning fallacy and loads of research has been done on this.

We really overestimate how much we can get done in a limited amount of time. And so you may think that you can, you know, in a weekend, you know, repaint the whole kitchen. But it turns out that what you need to do for that is you need to tidy up first, then you need to prepare the walls and clean everything and you need to find something to put on the floor to protect it. And then you realise you haven't got quite the right paint, but the shop's not open anymore. So you've got to wait until the Sunday to get that. And that actually then the coats need to dry and it all takes longer than you think it will. And again and again, we do this. And you see this in huge, you know, government procurement projects as well. You know,

when no building a tram project has, you know, ever been done on time. It always, we always underestimate these things. And so part of the trick to avoid that is to slightly take on fewer things, to allow yourself a bit longer and to allow some time for things to go wrong. And really interestingly, in one experiment I really like, they asked PhD students how long they thought it would take and to finish their PhDs. And then they asked the other PhD students, their other students, how long they thought that person would take to finish it. And when you're talking about someone else, we tend to allow for some time for things to go wrong, for, you know, your computer to update yourself and not work anymore, or for you to get a bad cold and not be able to work

for a couple of days. And so we allow for all those things when it's about someone else, but we don't for ourselves. So one trick, actually, is to ask someone else, if you're planning a project, ask someone else how long they think it might take. And they, they will give a more accurate result than you would. And then another is just to not fill your time with too many, not to agree to too many demands. You can do things like particularly if it's in the future. So if we're asked to do something in six months time and you need to, which involves travelling to the other end of the country, you might well say, oh yeah, I'll do that. If the idea of doing that next week or the week after fills you with absolute dread, then don't agree to do it in six months time unless

something's going to be different in six months time and you could fit it in. So partly we, again, with all the best will in the world and our attempt to do what other people want and please other people, then we might say yes to more things than we can do. And so our to-do list gets, you know, we've made it bigger ourselves. We've put pressure on ourselves. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected.

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Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. With over 100 years of combined expertise, Name and Focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this mantra has shaped every innovation in high-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering, balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking. Name Audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision

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So I sort of call it decision fatigue. Like these days we're just bombarded with countless options on almost everything, what we're going to eat. Everyone's gone through a streaming service. this for, you know, 20 minutes before even deciding what they're going to watch, you know, there's so many decisions we have to make all the time. And I really do think that wears us down, you know, is there anything we, why is that? And is there anything we can do to sort of make our decision-making just a little bit easier? Yeah, there is a concept within psychology

called choice overload. And there have been studies, I mean, some of them are argued about a bit, but there have been studies showing that if people have more choices, they're actually, if they're going to buy something, they'll actually buy fewer in the end if they have more choices, or sometimes not buy them at all. You know, I delayed for years up, you know, getting a new computer. I knew I needed a new computer. But every time I looked, there were just so many.

And I just, each time I would think, I just can't be doing with this. And sometimes we are spending a really long time on decisions that really don't matter. You know, I found myself, you know, looking at all the reviews online for a plug. It's just a plug for the bar. You know, it really doesn't matter.

It's just got to fit. You know, it'll fit or it won't fit. And then if it really doesn't, if it's really terrible, then I may have to get another one. But instead, I'm reading all these reviews where I think, oh, this one looks good. And then there's some people giving it two stars. And I'm thinking, oh, some of them only give it two stars. Oh, but some of them give it five. And so then I'm trying to work out, well, why is there's this discrepancy?

It really doesn't matter. And it really, really isn't a good use of my time. And if you think about it, you know, 20 years ago, we would have just gone to the shop and bought the plug and come back with it. but we now have far more information available to us. So we can research everything to within an inch of its life. And I think we need to start deciding which decisions matter and which don't. And having some defaults in a way for some things and sometimes not choosing.

Obama, when he was president, famously just had two different types of suit he wore. And so he wore a blue suit or a grey suit every day. And he designed himself, if you like, a work uniform. so he didn't have to think about what to wear. Now, some people, you know, I like choosing what to wear, so I wouldn't want to do that. But some people don't like choosing what to wear and would like to do that. So it's a question of working out which decisions do matter to you and are worth spending some time on. Because the big decisions, you know, and if, so maybe you do want to read lots of reviews

if you're thinking of something much more expensive than a plug, you know, something like a holiday, then you do want to make sure that you're, you know, getting value for money and getting something you'll really enjoy and appreciate. but these small decisions that we don't, you know, we don't need to. And also you can outsource decisions that are not in your expertise. You know, if you don't know about this particular thing, then maybe do just believe the person in the shop who says, well, this one might be the one you need or ask someone else and let them, let someone else choose for you. And then you're, I mean, William James put this as then you're saying, the American philosopher and

psychologist said, you know, the higher powers of your mind will be set free for their own proper work if you make fewer of these small decisions. So I think we are bombarded with too many decisions now and we need to actively make fewer decisions. So let's stick with that idea of expertise then. So in the book, you also talk about confidence, such an interesting, subtle thing. You know, we typically all think, oh, well, you know, confidence is a great thing. I bet many of us, if we could say, I can change one thing about myself. Well, I wish I had a bit more confidence, you know, but this is a hugely subtle effect, isn't it? You know, what can you tell us about that that you've written in the book? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. So, so what is surprising in a way

is that there is such a thing as too much confidence. So you think, or, you know, you know, what we want is more confidence, not to feel nervous about, say, going into a room of people, but also to have more confidence in ourselves that we can succeed and we're taught, you can do anything you want if you've got the confidence to do it. Now, it's not true you can do anything you want if you've got the confidence to do it. And there is a thing and you will, you know, you endlessly hear, I don't know, interviews with people who've won Wimbledon where they say, oh, I used to pay tennis in the road when I was five and I really, really wanted to win Wimbledon. And it makes you think, oh, so if you really want to win it, you can win it. But, you know, I used to play tennis in the road.

when I was five and I really wanted to win Wimbledon. It ain't going to happen. And so there is this thing it's known in psychology as survivorship bias, that we only hear from the survivors, if you like. So we hear from the people who became a, who had a number one hit or who won Wimbledon or, you know, played for the England football team, whatever it is. We hear from them, but we don't hear from all the many thousands of other people

who also wanted to do that and didn't because they weren't exceptional and didn't, you know, put in those many, many, many tens of thousands of hours. was. But also there are, there's really interesting research where people just overestimate what they, what they know about things. And there's a thing called the illusion of explanatory depth where you ask people things like, can you explain how a helicopter takes off? And at first we say, oh yeah, yeah, what happens is the, you know, the blades start to rotate and then it goes off the ground and air happens. And then you realize kind of, oh, actually, and I don't really know how a helicopter works. I know it's something to do with air and blades and they spin and it goes.

but actually that we can't really explain it, but that we think we can. There was a study in 2022 in New Zealand that I really like where they ask people what chance they thought they had of landing a plane successfully. And people massively overestimated how successful they would be at landing a plane. And then they showed people a video from the back of a cockpit of a pilot landing the plane. And this video was declared by another pilot to be 100% useless. It didn't tell them how to do it. You couldn't really see exactly what the pilots had.

hands were doing, it was absolutely useless. And yet, after that, people thought they had an even higher chance of being able to land a plane if they'd watched that. And again, of course, there are these exceptions where you hear someone landing a plane. You hear about the story of, you know, there was a guy in Florida a couple of years ago who did successfully land a plane when the pilot was taken ill, you know, a tiny plane. But even then on the, you can still see the videos of it on YouTube and you can hear the other pilots in other planes round about absolutely marvelling at what did. They knew that this was really exceptional to be able to do that and that actually these things are all harder than they look. There was a UGov study in 2021 where they asked

1,200 people whether they thought they could win a fight against various animals and they had no weapons at all. So no knife, no gun, no nothing. 23% of men thought that they could win in a fight with a king cobra. 38% thought they'd win against an eagle and 7% thought they could win against a grizzly bear. Now, maybe they were exceptional hand-to-hand grizzly bear fighters, but I kind of doubt that. And so we have this confidence that we can do things, in fact, that we can't. And this isn't necessarily, you know, a good thing. What we need is to be able to accurately judge our level of how good we are at things, but we don't like doing that, just as, you know, lots of people hate asking the way in a city they don't live in. And yet, we're all really happy to help someone else to ask the way.

It's not embarrassing that you're not stupid if you don't know the way around every city in the world. You only know the way, hopefully, around your own. And there has been research showing that more humility is actually a really good thing and that we find people who are more humble to be more attractive as friends and as partners and to be more successful at work. And so I think we slightly need to move away from this, you know, confidence is everything. Realism, kind of expansive realism could be everything in an acceptance of ourselves. And I don't want this to sound defeatist.

You know, this is to make us feel happier and calmer. We need to accept ourselves who we are. It doesn't mean we can still try it things. You know, we really, really can still try and still achieve. So kind of related to this is that our natural tendency to compare ourselves and our abilities to others. You have this famous saying, comparison is the thief of joy, etc. But we all do it naturally.

But if you sort of vaguely start digging into this, you think, well, in many ways our lives, even like from an evolutionary basis, are really based on competition. So, you know, how do we reconcile this with the way that we should act for our own health and the happiness of others as well? Yeah, it's very, very tempting to compare ourselves with others. And as you say, we all do it all the time. And the difficulty now is that we can, of course, compare ourselves with many, many, many, of thousands of people, you know, for our social media and other things online, we can compare ourselves with so many people now than we used to be able to, even 20 years ago, you could only compare yourself with, say, your friends. And there you might see that, yeah, your friends, we're good at

different things and we have different attributes and that that's absolutely fine. But it is very, very tempting to think, well, if they can do that, I should be able to do that and look at the brilliant weekend, everyone else was having. And yet we completely know that people's feeds are curated and that this isn't what's representative of their life. And I think this is another one where we need to try really hard not to compare ourselves and to ask ourselves what we are good at and what we're not. And many people when they compare themselves with others will then start, you know, experiencing the imposter phenomenon, as it's properly called, you know, imposter syndrome, where they then feel that they're the only one who doesn't know what they're doing. And yet

the list of people who've experienced imposter syndrome includes, you know, David Bowie and Michelle Obama and Einstein, you know, all of these amazing people. And so if they all thought that as well, then in fact the evidence shows that people who experience imposter syndrome are just as successful, possibly even better at collaborating and more effective interpersonally in their, in their skills with other people. And yet many people are convinced that we're going to get found out, that we sort of know what we're doing, but we're busking it and we're going to get found out. But the secret is no one else really knows what they're doing either. You know, everyone is doing this, this busking it. And so we need to try really hard not to compare ourselves against others

and to ask, well, what is going to really give me meaning? What is going to really make me happy? And I'm going to, you know, try my best to do that thing. But if I can't win Wimbledon, then that's not the end of the world. So we've talked about a lot of the factors that can lead to us feeling overwhelmed. But, you know, let's talk about something that's really important. and that's the stress. So the effect that all of these different things that we've talked about can have on us. You know, we've all felt it at some points, and obviously it can be very harmful. But also, like going back to the evolutionary argument, it must exist for a reason.

Like, sometimes it can help us perform better. So what's the subtle difference going on there? And, you know, how can we manage that a little better? Yeah, totally. So it's not that we want to banish all stress, in fact, because some stress can be useful. And it does help us to perform better, as you say. So when we feel nervous, those nerves kind of sharpen our thinking. They narrow our thinking cognitively, which you don't want to happen all the time.

But you do at that moment we are trying to concentrate on something. If you've got to give a speech at a wedding or a presentation at work, then you want to do as well as you can at that moment. And actually nerves will sharpen your thinking. They stop you thinking about, you know, everything else that's going on and watching, you know, a car going by. and you will really focus and concentrate and do better. And in a way, there's this kind of image problem. We think of the words stress and we think of distress in a way, that it's always distressing.

But it really doesn't have to be. And there are really clever studies where they make people stress. They're very mean. You know, they do mean things to people like suddenly tell people they've got to perform a karaoke version of Don't Stop Believe in by Journey, which is quite a hard song to sing. And then they tell them that their accuracy is going to be measured on this. But what is really clever in that study, I love this study.

they, I mean, I'm glad I didn't have to do it, but they got half the people to say beforehand, I'm excited, and half the people to say, I'm anxious, out loud. And the people, when they looked at the accuracy, the people who had to say, I am excited, got 80% accuracy. And the people who had to say, I am anxious, got 53% accuracy. So people did significantly better if they said out loud, they were excited first. And so there is lots of research on what's known as stress re-appraisal. so reappraising stressful moments

as something where that stress might help you. And you need to say to yourself, I'm excited about this thing, this is why my heart is racing. And I'm excited because it's important to me and it's important to do well. And that this is why I am feeling what you might interpret as nerves,

but actually this is nervous excitement because this is something that matters and is important. And when they got people to suddenly give talks that they weren't expecting to have to give that were rated by other people, their talks were actually rated as more persuasive and more confident

if they had to say, I'm excited, rather than if they had to say, I am calm. In a way, in some situations, you don't want to be too calm. The problem comes when it's chronic. So obviously chronic stress, and when your body is in that heightened state all the time, we know is damaging for people. This can be, you know, damaging to the cardiovascular system, metabolically and at a neural level in the brain as well and at the cellular level. So we know it's damaging if it's chronic.

But for when it's sometimes, then that's, it's actually weirdly something to be, to be welcomed. And people who, when in really interesting research at Stanford by Alia Crum, they taught people how to have an idea that stress can sometimes be enhancing and sometimes be bad. And people actually had a more adaptive profile of the stress hormone cortisol if they'd learnt to have the stresses enhancing sometimes mindset, rather than thinking it's always debilitating. So it's a question of balance.

I mean, with loads of these things, it's a question of trying to get that, balance, really. So we've talked about an awful lot there. So sort of by way of summary, rather than, you know, buying the book, do you have any sort of headline tips you give to somebody listening who thinks maybe, you know, they are struggling with being overwhelmed or even burnt out at times? Yeah, so I think the first thing is this, is this acceptance. So this asking yourself, why are you feeling so overwhelmed? Are there pressures where you are adding to your own stresses by expecting too much of yourself. Do you have perfectionist tendencies? Is there any way that you can let those go a bit? And then when it comes to how to deal with the pressures, the other

kind of overwhelm in a way, the pressures that you can't get rid of, the fact that you may be caring for somebody and have two jobs and there is just not enough time for things, then it's a question of using different techniques that allow you to worry less and using different techniques to manage your stress. And that could be things like having micro breaks, you know, having one to two minute micro breaks, which sounds a really short time, but could just be the time you go to get a cup of tea, that making sure you have those really short breaks, rather than just ploughing on and on, and they may have to be short if you're really, really busy. There is evidence that really shows that those can make a difference, and look out for the activity that you find is rest for.

There are lots of ways of worrying less by, for example, setting aside a certain time of day as your worry time, where you will sit at the kitchen table for 10 minutes, and you will just worry and maybe write lists of the things you're worrying about. And the reason for doing this is then at other times of day, when you are inclined to worry, then you might think, well, no, this isn't my worry time. I'm not going to worry now because that's for worrying about later. A really interesting research from Ad Kirchoff in the Netherlands

that shows that that can work really well. And things like talking about your worries in the third person, this is known as psychological distancing. So you say out loud, Claudia is worried that she won't be able to get this project done in time, and that is making her feel very stressed. And it just distances yourself from it slightly and allows you to see it from another perspective

and see it from outside. And the other thing that can really give perspective is that I really like is the idea of an aw walk, so not the rowing kind, but A-W-E, which is where you go for a walk, or you can just do it when you're walking to the station and you look out for things that strike awe in you. And this can help you, which might be, you know,

a tree that's a lovely shape or a skeleton of a dying leaf or a building that's been made where you think, this really amazing how on earth did humans make that building. And this can help you to get, to step back a bit and to get perspective that there's this kind of whole world going on that isn't worried about your worries and that that's okay. And that you're one part of this, you're one small part of this and that that's okay. And I think all of these, I mean there's loads more of them,

but all these different things, people will find that some of them really work for them really well. And it's a question of kind of almost having your own anti-overwhelmed prescription by doing a pick and mix of the things that you think might work. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Claudia Hammond. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out her book,

Overwhelmed, Ways to Take the Pressure Off. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then why not check out our YouTube channel, at Science Focus. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now.

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