Dr. K's perspective on why someone is overwhelmed and my own two cents.

First things first, I am a great admirer and almost a a great fan of Dr. K. His YouTube videos are eye opening and provide a window into my mind and sometimes my soul.  

Now to his quote : it's not simply the sum of problems but rather a disparity between chosen ("active") and unchosen ("passive") challenges.

How I see it in my head:

As you can see, passive challenges makes you feel lose control and hence it positively adds to the feeling of being overwhelmed.

On the other hand, active challenges, even those that are not related to the actual problem at hand, will give you a sense of control, reducing the sense of feeling overwhelmed.

And I have seen that happening with me. Since my life has way more passive challenges (even though, I could have turned them into active ones, by making certain choices at the right time), if I can distance myself and go make some tea or clean the house, I do feel better. Of course, it does absolutely nothing to the problem itself. It is still there, staring down on me, but I don't feel that anxious or panicked.

As all good things, I am able to find a fault with this approach too. I think this behaviour further reinforces my acts of procrastination. Over time, I tend to move more and more active challenges into the passive ones. Only because, I couldn't finish them in the first place. And why once might ask, it was because I was overwhelmed.

Now, I don't think this is not a good insight. It absolutely is. I just want to take a moment to remind myself that this approach needs to be followed up with the act of persistence and making sure each active challenge logically concludes and doesn't creep back into the pile of unfinished ones which later on become passive ones.