"I'm so overwhelmed" might be the most common update in business. You hear it at networking events, in Facebook groups, and in your own head on a Monday morning. In this episode, Rebecca shares the stat that started the conversation: 90% of founders have felt stress or burnout severe enough to consider quitting, and for 15% it is constant.

In this Double Kaufman episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, co-host Rebecca Kaufman (Amanda's sister, who has also worked on her team) asks Amanda to unpack something she has said for years: overwhelm isn't a feeling. Amanda, founder of Clairvenu, explains what the word is actually diagnosing, the reasons so many people repeat it, the habits that design it into a business by accident, and the design decisions that start to reverse it.

Overwhelm Is a Diagnosis for the Feelings Underneath

Our language is getting tweet-sized. We say "I'm stuck" or "I'm overwhelmed" as shorthand, and Amanda's point is that overwhelm is not the feeling itself. It is a diagnosis for the feeling behind the feeling.

How It Matters: If we had more characters to say the full extent of it, "I'm overwhelmed" would sound closer to: I feel really frustrated and dysregulated, because my mind and my attention are trying to resolve so many things at once, and I can't do it. Rebecca sums up the distinction: you might be overwhelmed as a state of being, but what you are feeling is anxious, frustrated, or pissed off about it.

How to Do It: Name the actual feeling when you can. Flustered, depressed, sad, demotivated. A named feeling gives you something to work with. A diagnosis of "overwhelmed" mostly just tells you there is a lot around you.

Common Mistake: Treating overwhelm as the problem to solve, when it is really a label sitting on top of feelings and circumstances you have not looked at yet.

The World Didn't Get Bigger. Your Awareness Did

Amanda grew up in a town of about 3,500 people where you knew everyone by face, if not by name. Moving to Saskatoon, then Calgary, then the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex with about 11 million people, she noticed something about her own reaction to each move.

How It Matters: The people were always there. She just did not know about them. Amanda sees the same thing in business owners. What they call overwhelm is often a rapid expansion of awareness: I could pay attention to this, and this, and this. The error in thinking is believing you have to pay attention to every single thing in your business at all times, and that if you don't, you must be a hot mess express nobody would want to buy from.

How to Do It: Decide what is important in the first place. At some stage, you can decide a piece of information is interesting and irrelevant to your choices right now. Amanda calls that freeing.

Common Mistake: Letting insecurity drive. Amanda calls the insecurity the really damaging part of overwhelm: doubting your service, the quality of your work, or your credibility in a sea of competition undermines your behavior at every step. Rebecca adds that marketers take full advantage of that insecurity.

We Repeat "I'm So Busy" to Bond and Claim Status

If overwhelm can be designed out of a business, Rebecca asks, what keeps people designing it in? Amanda's first answer: it is popular.

How It Matters: Saying you are overwhelmed or busy gives people a form of relatability. You bond over the shared experience. It also claims status. When someone at a networking event asks what's new and you say you've been so busy, you are communicating that you are in demand, needed, and important, without describing any actual accomplishments or works in progress. There is no vulnerability in it.

How to Do It: Notice when "busy" or "overwhelmed" is standing in for the real list. Our brains look for simple explanations, and sharing the specifics takes more vulnerability. That specific list is where you can actually make decisions.

Common Mistake: Repeating the message because everyone around you does. Rebecca admits she has shown up to that meeting and made that statement herself.

Overwhelm Is a Collection of Habits

When Amanda works with a client who is overwhelmed, she thinks of it as a collection of habits they have developed. That's it. One of the biggest things she does is slow the thinking down.

How It Matters: Life is complicated, and one of our biggest limitations as humans is that we can only really focus on one thing at a time. We try to get around it with multiple Chrome tabs and multiple apps, and you still can only look through one window at a time, metaphorically and physically.

How to Do It: Close the tabs on purpose, and have some faith that you can return to that website or that task if it is important enough. Amanda shares a story from her consulting days about a leader who came back from two or three weeks off, selected every email in her inbox, and deleted them. Her philosophy: if it's important enough, they'll email me again. Most people take a full inbox as a signal to catch up, and spend their return from a restorative vacation recovering from the fact they took a break.

Common Mistake: Treating email as the work. Amanda loves email as a technology, and she is clear that email is not the work. Before this episode she emailed Rebecca an outline. What mattered was the contents, which gave them something to structure the conversation around, not the fact that an email was sent.

Living in Reaction Is a Design Decision

Rebecca frames it as an old system from a previous phase of life still running on autopilot. Amanda names the first default setting to reverse: reaction.

How It Matters: Many people live in reaction, not only to the inbox but to social media content and other people's opinions. Even the habit of picking up your phone before you roll out of bed is designed into your life. When Amanda suggests plugging the phone in another room, people often recoil at the idea of not being completely available at all hours.

How to Do It: One of Amanda's mentors told her to be easy to find and hard to reach. That separates visibility (content produced, findable, out there) from being in reaction to an inbox demanding your attention. Responsiveness has value, and you can design systems to respond on your behalf, hire a team, or train AI systems, creating more space to be okay, safe, and truly productive. Rebecca's summary: less reaction, more intention.

Common Mistake: Assuming constant availability is the price of being visible. Amanda's answer is to question everything.

A Sounding Board Helps You See Your Blind Spots

Can people do this work on their own, or is it better with a sounding board? Amanda says it is both.

How It Matters: Our brains fill in blanks to save processing resources. Amanda describes an illusion where you stare at an image, the screen changes to a beautiful green park, and when you look again it is actually black and white. The same shortcut is how you miss a typo through fifteen edits. When you are running on autopilot, you have blind spots you can't see on your own.

How to Do It: Find someone who will ask you questions and offer a different perspective on what else can be true. Amanda says that can really accelerate the process. Entrepreneurs often feel they have to build in isolation, and she is clear you don't. Coaches and communities are a big benefit for exactly this reason.

Common Mistake: Bonding over the complaint instead of cleaning it up. Amanda is direct: being super overwhelmed is actually your job to clean up.

Break Up With the Idea That You Have to Be Overwhelmed

Amanda's closing advice is to break up with overwhelm. You had a good time together, you found out what you were going to get from it, and now you can let it go.

How It Matters: The world is not going to stop being stimulating, complicated, or surprising. What changes is what you do with it. Amanda thinks of the horses that pulled carriages in London with blinders on. The noise and chaos are still there, and you can decide where to regulate your focus and the reason you are doing it.

How to Do It: First, name the feeling, not the state. Then start making design decisions that reduce the overwhelm. Learn influence skills. And when something bothers you, like the pile in the corner of your house, remember you have two choices: decide not to let it bother you, which is a legitimate choice, or put a system in place to reduce or eliminate it and make the change.

Common Mistake: Treating overwhelm as a requirement of building a business.

Conclusion

Overwhelm is a word that covers a lot of ground. Underneath it are real feelings worth naming, an awareness that expanded faster than your filters, and a set of habits that were designed into your days, often by accident. The way out is design. Decide what is important, close the tabs on purpose, stop treating email as the work, step out of reaction, and get a sounding board to point out what autopilot hides. Then break up with the idea that overwhelm is part of the deal.

To hear the full conversation, listen to Episode 378 of The Amanda Kaufman Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean that overwhelm isn't a feeling?

Amanda describes overwhelm as a diagnosis for the feelings underneath it. When people say they are overwhelmed, they usually feel frustrated, anxious, or dysregulated because their attention is trying to resolve too many things at once. Naming the actual feeling gives you something to work with.

What causes overwhelm for business owners?

Amanda points to a rapid expansion of awareness, the belief that you have to pay attention to every part of the business at all times, and habits like living in reaction to your inbox, social media, and other people's opinions. Insecurity about your service or credibility makes it worse.

How do I reduce overwhelm in my business?

Start by deciding what is important in the first place, and let interesting but irrelevant information go. Close tabs on purpose, treat email as a tool rather than the work, and design systems, team, or AI to handle responsiveness so you can be easy to find and hard to reach.

Should I work through overwhelm on my own or with help?

Amanda says it is both, and a sounding board helps a lot. Someone asking you questions and offering a different perspective can reveal blind spots you can't see while you are running on autopilot.

Where can I get help designing a business that doesn't overwhelm me?

Amanda's free live training, How Serious Service Businesses Build High-Converting Funnels & Acquisition Systems That Run 24/7, walks through how the pieces of a service business fit together so growth is built on a system you can measure. Register at https://clairvenu.com/training. If you want an outside perspective on your specific situation, apply for a free Revenue Clarity Conversation at https://clairvenu.com.