232: Overcoming Overwhelm: The Power of Senseless Action

Blowing Leaves on a Windy Day: Why Senseless Action Breaks the Spiral

When I ask what’s bothering people most about their homes, two answers dominate everything else: “I’m overwhelmed” and “I don’t know where to start.” That stuck feeling is genuinely rough — fighting the inertia of getting your body moving toward anything productive, while your head spins through “I should start here,” “no, I need to do this first,” “but this is bugging everyone else” until you’re paralyzed and doing nothing at all, purely because you’re afraid of doing the wrong thing instead of just doing something.

Why tutorials make it worse before they make it better

Here’s something worth naming first: if you’ve ever followed an organizing video, a decluttering tutorial, or honestly any how-to content and felt somehow behind or inadequate, that’s not a personal failing. I feel the exact same frustration with technology tutorials for my business — I’ll pull up a recent, specific video, follow along step by step, and within three steps my screen doesn’t match theirs at all, and I have no idea why.

The reason is presumed knowledge. Anyone teaching you something is further along their own journey than you are. They’re in the middle; you’re at the beginning. They genuinely believe they remember what it was like to not know this yet, but they’ve forgotten just enough that gaps show up in what they explain. That’s not malicious, and it’s not your fault for not catching up instantly. It just means you’re meeting someone at a different point on their own timeline. If you’re finding people who’ve genuinely struggled with the same thing and are honestly trying to help, that’s already one big step better than following someone who’s never struggled at all. And someday, you’ll be the person further along, unknowingly leaving out steps for someone else just starting out.

When nothing makes sense, do something senseless

Now to the actual hack. When you’re circling, stuck, and nothing is making logical sense as a starting point, give yourself full permission to do something senseless instead. Not the thing you should do. Just whatever you’re genuinely gravitated toward in that moment, no justification required.

This past week I was deep in that spiral — running around doing things that never seemed to add up to anything. I described it to myself as blowing leaves on a windy day: you’re out there working, the leaves move in a direction, and then the wind sweeps through and resets everything. No matter how much effort goes in, it feels like it evaporates, with nothing to show for it.

My daughter texted asking me to start a load of laundry she’d forgotten. That gave me one small, concrete task. While starting it, I noticed cloth napkins that had been sitting, clean, in the corner of the laundry room since Christmas — never put away because they need ironing before they’ll fit in the drawer, and we only use them twice a year. Nobody was bothered by them. They weren’t blocking any real progress. And yet something in me was drawn to them.

So I ironed four of them. Not all twelve place settings’ worth. Just four. And it genuinely helped — my body was up and moving, and I had visible proof I’d done something, which blowing leaves on a windy day never gives you.

Momentum cascades from there

That small senseless act led naturally into switching the laundry, then stripping and washing beds for kids coming home for a visit, then this very post getting written and scheduled ahead of time (a rare feeling of being ahead instead of behind), and it left me energized enough to think about vacuuming next. None of that would have happened if I’d stood frozen trying to determine the single “correct” starting point. The senseless act didn’t even need to be finished to work — I never did get to napkins five through twelve. It just needed to happen.

Your practical, actionable step

Next time you’re stuck spiraling with no logical starting point, skip the search for the “right” task entirely. Do whatever your attention is actually drawn to, even if it makes no sense and won’t matter to anyone else, and let that be the thing that gets your body moving.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.