A few years ago, I thought sensory overload meant standing on a noisy shopping street until everything became too much.
Now I know that sensory overload can also happen when you are alone in a quiet flat.
Sometimes I sit at my desk with a coffee in the morning, and my mind is already running at 120 per cent.
A new feature for meinsystem.
A YouTube comment I meant to answer.
A bug someone reported yesterday.
An invoice.
The shopping list.
A video I want to make.
An email I have avoided for three days.
Suddenly, even the simplest task feels impossible. Not because the task is difficult, but because everything is asking for attention at the same time.
What overwhelm feels like for me
Usually, you cannot see it from the outside. I simply sit there, stare at the screen, scroll through YouTube or walk around the flat without a destination. It may look as if I am doing nothing.
Inside my head, the opposite is happening. It feels as though twenty people are talking to me at once and all expect an immediate answer. The harder I try to create order, the more chaotic it becomes.
Eventually, my brain shuts down. I want to lie down because everything has become too much.
Why AuDHD can be so exhausting
I have ADHD and autism. It often feels as though they pull in different directions.
The ADHD side notices everything: every idea, every notification and every possibility. Every new project feels interesting. The autistic side wants the opposite: structure, predictability, clear sequences and quiet.
The problem is that the ADHD side constantly brings in new things that the autistic side then has to process. Eventually, the entire system becomes overloaded. That creates the overwhelm many people with AuDHD know—not because of one major disaster, but because of a hundred small things arriving together.
My brain has no automatic filter
Something I did not understand for a long time is that many people seem to filter what matters right now without consciously doing it. That often does not happen for me.
A bug in my app. A message on Instagram. The thought that I need to buy milk. A new business idea. A sound outside the window. Sometimes my brain treats all of it as equally important.
That is what makes it so tiring. Not the task itself, but the constant sorting.
My biggest mistake
For years, I thought I simply had to become tougher. More discipline, more willpower, more pushing through. If other people could work productively for eight hours, I should be able to do the same.
So I tried to force my way through the overwhelm. Usually, the result was even more overwhelm, more frustration and more self-doubt.
I see it differently now. When my brain is overloaded, I do not need more pressure.
I need less input.
What genuinely helps me
Getting everything out of my head
This was probably the most important change in my life. I used to try to hold everything in my head: appointments, ideas, tasks, routines and shopping. That does not work, at least not for me.
When I notice that things are becoming too much, I write everything down. Truly everything, with no order, no structure and no judgement. I simply move it out of my head.
Afterwards, it often feels as if someone has closed twenty browser tabs.
Making fewer decisions
On bad days, decisions are incredibly tiring. What should I eat? What should I wear? Where do I begin? What matters most? Every one of them takes energy.
That is why I decide as much as possible in advance: my morning routine, my work routine and my recurring tasks. Not because I am perfectly organised, but because I know how expensive spontaneous decisions are for my brain.
Seeing only the next step
When I look at a list of fifty tasks, nothing often happens at all. My brain freezes.
So I no longer ask myself, “How will I finish everything today?” I ask, “What is the next step?” Only one step. Not the whole mountain, just the next metre. That makes an enormous difference.
Deliberately reducing sensory input
I used to try to tolerate more. Now I prefer to reduce input before it becomes too much. Put in my Loop earplugs. Silence my phone. Work somewhere quiet. Keep fewer tabs, fewer programs and fewer things open at once.
It sounds unremarkable. Yet those small changes are often what stop my mind from overflowing completely.
Why I built meinsystem in the first place
Honestly, I did not originally build meinsystem because I wanted to start a business. I built it because I was constantly overwhelmed.
I was tired of asking the same questions every morning: What do I need to do today? What have I forgotten? What matters? What comes next?
I wanted a system outside my head—something that could hold the information for me and show me the next step when my brain could no longer find one.
Many features in meinsystem grew out of moments like these. They did not begin as product ideas. They began as real problems I faced every day.
If this feels familiar
If you are caught in overwhelm right now, do not try to repair your entire life today. Do not try to solve every open task. Do not try to become more productive.
Take a sheet of paper and write down everything moving through your head. Only that.
Sometimes that is enough for a little quiet to return. And sometimes the way back begins exactly there.