In this episode of the Teacher Career Coach Podcast, host Daphne Gomez shares raw insights on overcoming overwhelm and guilt while juggling teaching, family, and career transitions.
Discover practical productivity strategies tailored for exhausted educators— from naming stressors and reframing self-talk to creating a step-by-step plan for leaving the classroom. Learn how to manage time wisely, prioritize tasks like networking and resume building, and make steady progress toward a fulfilling new career, even on empty. Perfect for teachers ready to reclaim their energy and future.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Teacher Career Coach podcast. I’m your host, Daphne Gomez, and I wanna keep it real with you. I have been having some big spiral moments this month where I feel like I am just failing. I have a lot of responsibilities and things that I wanna do for my daughters. I have a lot of projects with teacher, career coach that I’m excited to be working on, people I want to connect with, research that I want to do, emails, I wanna write, podcasts, I wanna record, and I, you know, I want to be a better wife, a better friend.
A better family member, a better daughter, and I just, everything’s been kicking me in the butt this last month. Right now my kids are, oh gosh, they’re so stinking cute. They’re turning two in a couple weeks, and I feel like a train hit me. I don’t feel like I’m doing a good enough job. There’s always more that I can be doing, whether it’s, right now we’re doing about two to three hours of physical therapy with my daughter per day.
And that’s like super important to me. I also don’t feel like I am present enough when I’m doing that physical therapy. I wanna still be like really interacting with everyone and having moments of joy and I want to be going on walks in the park and doing nice, cute stuff with them while they’re still really little.
And just all of this feels impossible and I feel defeated at times. I feel guilty, and I just overall have been feeling sad, big feelings about it. And that’s why I wanted to record today’s episode because I know many of you listening at home feel like you are also probably failing in a way. if you haven’t.
I’ve already successfully done this big project, then it’s never gonna happen for you. It’s totally impossible, but it’s just this huge project and it takes a lot of time and energy, and that is true for anyone who’s changing careers, but especially those of you who are still actively teaching in a classroom.
Esp, it’s like the holiday time right now. You are probably even more overwhelmed and stretched thin. Your life doesn’t just end at teaching. It’s not your entire personality. It’s not your entire identity. So you have friends or family, you have significant others, you have little kids at home, and you have all these other responsibilities too.
And so very few jobs out there that drain your energy as much as teaching does. And then you have this huge project that takes a lot of time and energy. So I wanted to write a podcast episode about productivity strategies for when you are running on empty. Because the most important thing is that you don’t stop doing things that are difficult, especially goals that you’re working towards, things that are extremely important to you, but it’s more important that you create systems and tackle them and.
Manageable and efficient ways. And as always, I’m gonna use a lot of things that I’m doing implementing in my own life, things that I’ve talked to therapists about in the past. And sometimes it’s not gonna be applicable to your situation, so please take what works and leave the rest. But I hope that all of us, take away from this podcast episode.
That there’s sometimes a lot of advice out there, productivity advice or projects that other people are doing that might not be applicable to our situation in that timeline because we all don’t have the same 24 hours in a day, or we might be in this different season and our life, which requires us to slow down and do things in a more manageable pace.
The first step. Is to name what is overwhelming you and I went through some of my biggest stressors up at the top. It feels really silly, but just write it all down. I’ve written out this list of like, too many worries. And it was just like, here’s the 100 things that people have brought up that I need to be focused on.
Whether it’s like teaching them social skills of specific milestones or if it’s getting them into preschool or things that we’re working on in physical therapy or occupational therapy or with our speech therapists. It’s, we just, we have a lot going on and then also career focused. My health getting, my physical health back to a certain standard that I have for myself.
All these things that I really, I’m worried about and I like, it’s always bouncing around, buzzing around in my head, and decision fatigue, worry, physical exhaustion. Once you’ve just written out all of your worries, give yourself some real time to face them. And to start reflect on them. Are all of them very important to you at this moment or can you table some of them for three months or six months?
While you’re reflecting on it, is there anything that you can outsource, delegate to someone else? Is there anything that can help you if you start to tackle it first? Maybe it’s something that only is gonna take five minutes. Maybe it’s something that’s only gonna take an hour, but then you, you’ll stop thinking about it.
It’ll stop living on your list of things to do. One of the biggest things that happened when I took some time to face my guilt, my big feelings, my spiral for this month is I realized I was telling myself a story that wasn’t true. I can’t do everything all the time, and so this is a season where I’m going to be slower.
But guilt makes you feel like you are letting someone down like you’re failing. But guilt for me was more an emotion that I was feeling because I care really deeply about all of these things. I was treating myself like I had the same 24 hours in a day that I did three years ago. So I was fighting my current reality and trying to do so much that I, I wasn’t adjusting and reflecting on.
What my current state, where we are and what, going back to work as a mom of two kids looks like sometimes I will have time allotted to do something and I’ll get a phone call from a doctor or a social worker or insurance and it, it takes over priorities for that hour. I have to push things back and work late at night, and sometimes that means looking at my schedule.
Feeling out what are things that don’t need 100% of my creative energy that I can do late at night to take it off of my to-do list and still move forward? Even on those days where things just don’t go to planned or I don’t have an entire day to dedicate to this, like I did at a different time in my life when I was making that list of things that were overwhelming to me, there was something that I named that was not important to me at all.
That I could tell was bringing a sense of overwhelm, and that is social media. I can tell when I log in, I get scattered. I, my a DH brain just doesn’t feel well. I get overwhelmed, I get angry. And I can tell that I am addicted to it, and at the end of using it, I don’t feel any better and that it is not important for me at all.
What I’ve done with that information after reflecting on it is I’m making some active choices. I’ve been using this, little device. This isn’t sponsored. It’s called a brick, and it just locks me out of, um, social media. During certain parts of the day, so I don’t wake up and immediately do it, or when the kids go down for a nap, I’m able to focus on working during those hours so that I’m not adding unnecessary overwhelm to my life.
Which gets me to my next suggestion, which is use your time wisely. That means really feeling out the way that your body works. Like for me, I do my best creative work like writing in the morning. If I start writing anytime after like 3:00 PM in the afternoon, it would probably honestly take me like three times as long to write.
This podcast episode, this is one of those days where things kept getting pushed back. And so this is like later than five o’clock at night. I can still do it, even though I don’t have as much energy as I would earlier in the morning, I just know that this is something I can tackle on later in the afternoon.
And so think about the different tasks that you need to do, whether it’s writing your resume, applying for jobs. Adding people on LinkedIn listening to a podcast, are there different times of the day that you are more likely to do that? And it’s actually gonna feel a little bit better, it’ll be a little bit easier, there’s a little bit less tension, even if it is a task that you might not necessarily wanna do.
I try and schedule it in. And if you can do things at the exact same time, I would recommend that, like stacking things. So for me, I have too many emails that I’m subscribed to, so it’s overwhelming for me every time I open up my email inbox. So sometimes if I’m stuck on hold. I’ll be going through my email inbox and unsubscribe to emails to try and start sorting through and cleaning things up.
I don’t have the luxury or time to sit down for three or four hours and completely sort my email inbox. That is something a. I would’ve probably done three years ago, but that’s just not a priority. But taking it little tiny baby tasks at a time still feels like I’m, I’m helping with that overwhelm in a way that I’m moving forward.
You might be listening to this podcast while you’re doing household chores. And one kind of interesting thing I wanted to bring up in this podcast episode next week’s episode is all about ai, whether it’s how it’s changing the job market or how people are using it to rewrite the resumes. But I wanted to share something with you that I just, I thought was really interesting and relevant to this information or to this podcast episode.
I am hesitant to use AI. Like I need to give that disclaimer, I have some big feelings about it. I’ll go into it more next week. I just, the ethical uses of it, but I know I can’t be behind. I can’t not use it at all. It’s here and I know a lot of people are using it, but what I found really interesting for me personally, I don’t think that it’s helping me be more productive. I don’t think it’s a great use of my time for the most part. And that might be some of my, like a ADHD brain, but if I was help, if it was helping me with project management. It starts to go too deep, too fast, and the way that it works for me is I can ask it questions, okay, here’s 10 things that I’m trying to do, and then it gives me too much information, too fast.
I don’t really focus on it. And then it’s like, okay, do you want the next steps? Even after that? And I’m like, yeah, gimme the next steps. And it feels like I’ve done all this work. And then like 45 minutes later, there’s just so much information. I don’t remember the first thing it told me. Which was like the most important thing that it told me.
And I didn’t, I like, I didn’t absorb anything and I didn’t actually like move forward. So the thing that I wanna tell you is look at the different tasks that you are doing or the different ways that feel like you are being productive. That might not actually be productive, and that might be the way that you’re job hunting, the way that you’re scrolling social media.
It might be if you’re posting on LinkedIn every single day, but you’re not getting like any results for it. Just take inventory of different habits that you have that might be slowing you down or using up some of your precious time and just ask yourself. What can I do that is more productive during this limited time and limited energy that I have?
And I have to also say, think about different things that you can add to your time that might make you feel better. I’ve always personally really resented hearing this advice, so it stinks to say it out loud, but adding in exercise for me. Really just a 25 minute workout during my kids’ nap. I can feel energy boosts on those days and I feel more productive afterwards.
So I’ve been trying to implement it because I do see a difference. So if there’s anything like that gives you an energy boost, it helps you be better and you do have time for it, start to try and prioritize adding those types of things in as well.
My next tip is to reframe your thinking. It is so easy for us to be unkind to ourselves, not trust ourselves, and be just really harsh.
It’s being kind is not something that comes easily or like naturally to me. I don’t like bragging about myself, and that’s where a lot of that like guilt and shame and failure talk was coming from. But the best advice that I have for you with this is think of how you would encourage your friends, your old students, or your students or your own children.
So instead of saying, I had this goal and I didn’t finish it in this one sitting, tell yourself I did this meaningful task with an intention. Of working towards this overall goal, I’m moving forward and if you do need to go slower than you used to go or than you wanted to go, trust yourself that the pace is the right one for you.
Still. Just be proud of yourself every day for showing up and allow rest to be part of your strategy if your body and your brain needs it. It is absolutely not all or nothing. Just don’t give up. If you know in your heart that this is something that you want to continue to work towards, and when you did that list of worries or things that are on your plate, you still know that this is a priority that you want to continue working towards.
And lastly, don’t just have this huge project in front of you. As your goal, like you need to have a plan on how to get to that goal. So that means writing out what you’re gonna do in the sequence of how you’re gonna do it, so that on those days that you are completely mentally and physically depleted, you are able to fill in small time gaps and make progress.
It can help prevent you from distractions or shiny object syndrome, and it will help you use up any little to barely any free time that you have in a way that’s efficient. I don’t want you to freeze because you don’t know which the step is, the right next step to take. If I don’t want you to waste time researching endlessly or waiting until you feel 100% ready to start getting your hands dirty.
I also especially don’t want you to send out hundreds of resumes before you learn to translate them, or I don’t want you to send out resumes before you even really evaluate whether or not you would like the career that you’re applying to. So if you’re planning on leaving teaching, this is the order of tasks that I would do.
The sequence that I would suggest, first I would start to identify all of your non-negotiables and jobs. Like what’s the salary requirements that you need in order to survive? What are the benefits that are needed or what you would be willing to like, be flexible with? Then I would really get good at managing your time efficiently.
I would start warm networking on LinkedIn. That means with people that you absolutely know, adding all of them on LinkedIn and starting to see where they work. And then I would start worrying about what types of careers are the best fits for you. And that’s gonna take some work. It’s gonna take a lot of time.
You might be learning to read job descriptions, you might be building skill sets to see what feels the best, and then you’re gonna pick different companies that you may want to pursue and start cold networking. Then you’re going to be translating your resume. You’re gonna learn about applicant tracking systems.
You’re going to upload your resume to specific job search engines. You might do some more cold working, and then you’re really gonna focus on your interviewing skills, your cover letters, managing your time during your peak application season and preparing. Once you start getting those interviews, I don’t want you preparing for interviews just yet.
If you are still really focused on finding career clarity. There’s so many things that you can be focused on, and like I said, this is a really big project. It does not mean that it is impossible. You just are going to tackle it in small bite-sized pieces. And we’ve created a lot of resources that can help you with that.
This podcast alone has hundreds of episodes and they tackle a lot of those topics to help you with understanding kind of best practices and making sure that you’re not making some of the most common mistakes that teachers make when they’re writing their resumes or on LinkedIn. And so I really, I encourage you to go back and listen to some of our past podcast episodes, but I also have to say our most thorough program, the Teacher Career Coach course is open for enrollment right now.
And that list of all the tasks that you need to do was actually taken. From the syllabus. So those are all the step-by-step videos that we teach inside of the Teacher Career Coach course. And this is a program that I created to try to prevent you from feeling like you’re drowning in everything that you don’t know by just sharing what you do need to know in the sequence that you need to know it.
I wanted to remove the guesswork and start to break things down into more simple steps so that you can make progress even when you are exhausted and overwhelmed, and that can help you make more consistent progress with limited time and focus. It is also absolutely okay if this is not the right season for you to even think about this.
My goal is to help you find happiness, whether in your heart, you know, you have to leave the classroom. Or if this podcast episode helped you realize maybe the entire career change just goes to the back burner, and right now you have different priorities, but I do not want you to give up on this goal just because you were stretched thin.
Especially if the cause of the issue of your burnout is that job that you’re actually trying to leave, I don’t want you to be stuck in the cycle of this job makes you so burned out that you’re never gonna be able to leave it. If you do want to learn more about the Teacher Career Coach course and enroll before the window closes on November 17th, you can go to teacher career coach.com/course.
No matter what, I hope that this podcast helped you see that you’re not alone with your feeling of overwhelm, that many of us are struggling with the exact same feelings, and hopefully gave you a couple of good suggestions of what you can do to still make progress forward on some of your big important goals, while also being a little softer on yourself and giving yourself a little bit more grace and understanding the same that you would give to a good friend.
Or someone that you love. Thank you so much for being a listener of the Teacher Career Coach podcast, and we’ll see you on the very next episode.
RESOURCES
- If you are struggling right now, please seek help. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 802-273-8255
- Get the template! Writing a Teacher Resignation Letter to a Principal
- Take the FREE QUIZ: What career outside of the classroom are you qualified for?
- If you know it’s time to start your transition and are looking for resources and guidance, check out the Teacher Career Coach course today!
- Join our growing community (and connect with Daphne) on Instagram @teachercareercoach.
