Author Claudia Hammond wants our hamster-wheel lives to feel ‘a little less pressurized’ | Canada Voices

Your to-do list will outlive you. Searching for perfection is futile. No one else knows what they’re doing either. It’s not all about you.

There’s refreshing realism to Claudia Hammond’s new book Overwhelmed: Ways to Take the Pressure Off, which mines a deep well of scientific research on stress, overload and all the ways people sabotage their time.

Hammond, presenter on the BBC show and podcast All in the Mind, is a master of tempering expectations, countering the push to “lean in” that workers are tiring of. In Overwhelmed, the British author amasses hundreds of science-backed hacks to make our hamster-wheel lives “a little less pressurized.”

Like: taking a cold hard look at overcommitting, procrastination and perfectionism, scheduling breaks, rethinking to-do lists and embracing the stress that’s good for us.

The author has long been interested in how time passes us by; her previous books include Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception and The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age. In Overwhelmed, she counters the myth of the “super self” – the future version of ourselves we imagine who copes better, achieves more and doesn’t get over­whelmed, somehow doing this all while aging. She spoke with The Globe from London.

Feeling overwhelmed is now so prevalent, you write, that we’ve turned it into a noun: overwhelm. What’s at play here?

If you look at time use studies going back to the 1930s, we’re not necessarily busier now than we were then. We often have more spare time than people had in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, but it doesn’t feel that way. We feel overwhelmed.

Part of it is this blurring of boundaries between work and non-work, this sense of being always on, always connected, particularly to work and responsibilities.

Adding to it are the very wide choices we have. It’s an enormous luxury but it’s also very time-consuming. We have lots of modern conveniences to help us but there are added jobs now that didn’t used to exist. We do quite a lot of the admin for companies and organizations ourselves now. There is a lot of life admin, so even parts of leisure start to feel like jobs.

There’s also good evidence that perfectionism has risen. Perfectionist standards – what we think other people require of us, what we require of ourselves – make time feel more pressured. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to do everything we think we should do.

You believe overwhelm is reversible. But given the time pressures people put on each other – I’m thinking of intensive parenting culture, or AI tightening deadlines at work – is overwhelm fixable?

I’m not pretending it can all go away. And this is not a charter for giving up. Quitting isn’t satisfying, and trying to do as little as possible is no fun and doesn’t bring you meaning.

But take perfectionism. Here, it’s a question of asking ourselves what has to be done? Do you have to answer every e-mail? Does it all need to be done, same day? Which parts of the week felt good and meaningful and connected you to other people, and how can you have more of those? It’s beginning to see your time as a gift.

The book is rich with insights from neuroscience and psychology. Does it help make the case for readers reluctant to take their foot off the gas?

Sometimes what we intuitively see as a good route to success – for example, not taking breaks – the evidence shows the opposite. One German experiment followed surgeons who took several breaks during an operation. They finished more quickly and effectively, with fewer complications afterward. Sometimes we need research to find it’s not quite the way we think.

Is there a science-backed practice you’ve been adhering to this September?

September is like another January: We need to be very serious again and get down to business. The thing I do is the to-do list before bed. When I’m really stressed out about the next day, I write a list and leave it on my desk. This cognitive off-loading really works for me. Now it’s down there on that piece of paper and I don’t need to think about it.

As you were writing, the to-do list on your Any.do app stretched 93 items long. What’s it sitting at now?

Oh my word, let me have a look at the app. It’s going to be a lot. It says “99 plus.” That’s scary.

But I do quite like looking retrospectively at the list of crossed-off things. Loads of them are fun and satisfying. I appreciate that this is building up a whole bank of memories to look back on.

Beyond a list of demands, you view your to-do list as a sign of a full life. Does that approach resonate with people?

I’ve spent spring and summer at book festivals and events talking to audiences, and people do like the idea of reframing lists.

It’s a way of worrying less about time speeding up, as it does when you get older. The evidence shows that when you’re rejected, sad and lonely, time feels like it’s slowing down. So if time is going by fast, that could actually be a good sign. This is something I panic less about now. Even though it’s alarming when weeks go fast – it always seems it’s garbage day – that’s because these weeks are busy, full and interesting. Not everybody is lucky enough to have this.

You end on the flip side of overwhelm: “Flow,” a sense of “unworried absorption,” where we’re so engrossed in something that we forget about time. Given our fractured attention spans, how elusive is flow now?

Flow is hard to reach if you’re getting interrupted. Younger people in particular are now deliberately unplugging and going in search of flow, with activities like crafts and painting.

I’ve got a little garden in London. Before, when I’d be working at home and pop out to do bits of deadheading, I’d feel guilty, thinking I should be working. But looking at all the evidence on rest, these breaks are so good for us. Now I don’t feel guilty when I spend 10 minutes in my garden. This is protecting my mental health, enabling me to do all the other things I want to do, to be busy and do the rest of the world well.

This interview has been edited and condensed.