# What overwhelm really is, and why less work won't fix it [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-08 updated: 2026-10-08 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Organization source booklet: [What Breaks When You Grow](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/growth-breaks) Overwhelm is inflow without outflow, so the fix is to answer, decide and close things out, not to reduce what comes in. Overwhelm in a business is not too much work. It is a state in which things come in and do not go out. That is why the fix is not to cut what comes in, but to get things flowing out again. ## Overwhelm you bring on yourself The source opens the subject with a surprise: overwhelm is not necessarily something someone does to you. Sometimes you bring it on yourself. In a small business this is very familiar. There are emails, messages, notifications, a few WhatsApp groups, a couple of systems and a diary. Each of them came into the business to help. Together, they are the overwhelm. Suppose an owner who uses several tracking apps at once. Not one of them is up to date, precisely because there are several. Or an owner who added a form for every process. A year later she had a pile of forms, and nobody read any of them. And the opposite example: the same owner after she scrapped most of them. Exactly the same information, only now someone could actually read it. ## Inflow, inflow, inflow Here the source gives a mechanical diagnosis, and that is what turns overwhelm from something you feel into something you can fix. It describes a person who was overwhelmed, stopped trying to find out what was going on, and simply gave out. In its words, that person “created an inflow, inflow, inflow, inflow. But his job is to outflow”. That is the definition. **Overwhelm is inflow without outflow.** It is not the amount of work. It is a flow in one direction only: things come in and do not leave, and everything that comes in makes the next thing heavier. The fix follows from that, and it is the opposite of what most people do. **You do not cut what comes in. You restore what goes out.** Answer, decide, hand on, close. Suppose an owner with an inbox holding hundreds of unread emails. The amount of email reaching him has barely changed since last year. What has changed is that he no longer replies. Or an owner with several open decisions waiting on him. Every conversation with a customer gets heavier, because he carries all of those decisions into it. And the opposite example: the same owner after he closed every one of those decisions in a single day, even when a decision was not perfect. The week after felt completely different to him. So according to the booklet, you do not measure overwhelm by how much reaches you. You measure it by the difference between what arrived and what left. ## When something runs past its capacity The source also gives a physical example, a small copy machine bought to save money. It had a clear limit on how many copies it could produce a month, and it was run well beyond that. It kept breaking down, even in expert hands. The line that closes the story is sharp: it should never have been there in the first place. That is exactly the decision a small business makes at almost every stage of growth. You buy the cheap version, run it past what it was built for, and in the end pay more than the right version would have cost. And it is not only about equipment. According to the booklet it applies to software, to suppliers, and to people too. Suppose a garage that bought a used machine at half price. The machine spent weeks in for repair, and every one of those weeks cost more than the money it had saved. Or an office that stayed on the cheap software plan with a cap on users. Several people shared the same accounts, and nobody could tell any more who had done what. Or an owner who hired someone part time for a role that needs a full time person. The employee left after a few months, and the role stayed empty for a long while after. ## Too little information jams things too The source lists several ways a **line**, meaning the route a message takes from one person to another, gets jammed. Most of them are expected, like too much traffic or wrong information. One is a surprise: a line can jam precisely because too little goes through it. A two word message that then needs several calls to clarify jams the line worse than one complete message would. Suppose an owner texts a supplier “what's happening with the order?”, and only after several messages do they both realise he meant an old order. Another way is to go around the line. Suppose a customer contacts someone on the team directly instead of the office. That person does not know about the quote the office gave, and the customer ends up with two answers that contradict each other. This chapter of the booklet has two exercises: the gap exercise and the capacity exercise. Overwhelm is not solved by letting less in. It is solved by letting more out. - [What Breaks When You Grow](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/growth-breaks): A name for the failure, a sequence that shows you where you stand in it, and one answer to the question of what comes first. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/overwhelm-is-inflow-without-outflow) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/overwhelm-is-inflow-without-outflow)