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Go from overwhelmed to on-top-of things with flexible, compassionate text-based guidance

Do you want to make a difference, but struggle with getting it all done?

You know how it is: you're exhausted! Perhaps a lot of people rely on you and you don’t want to let them down. You want to feel good about what you do but it's so hard when you feel like you're running around in circles and constantly putting out fires.

All you want is to take a vacation. That, and to save the world.

If you want to feel better about your work and have more time for what really matters to you (and set yourself up for an easier, more enjoyable 2026), please read on:

The good news is that you can break this negative feedback loop by addressing the root cause of overwhelm.

After coaching hundreds of people, I have found that there is a common cause of overwhelm: People often feel overwhelmed because they try to finish a to-do list, instead of focusing on their priorities.

Without priorities, everything feels important, which makes it hard to make progress.

The difference between a priority and everything else you could do is comparable to triage in case of an accident: dealing with injured people can be very stressful. That's why it's crucial that everyone focuses their efforts on the most important things. Medical personnel will make sure that an injured person stays alive (priority) but they probably won't worry too much about cosmetic damage to their patient’s nose (not a priority).

While it's harder to identify priorities in our everyday life, the same principle holds true. Not all tasks you think you should do are created equally: some can make a huge positive difference in your life (priorities) while many others won’t move the needle much (to-dos).

But when you are overwhelmed, you are in a state of stress, and that makes it harder to determine what category tasks fall into.

What tends to happen when people don't address the root causes of their overwhelm:

If you don’t deal with the underlying causes, here's what will likely happen:

Unfortunately, your sense of overwhelm will keep on getting worse. As more tasks pile up, you will try to do more, which gets you more stressed, which makes it harder to focus.

You will likely stay in this downward spiral until you get competent help, learn to address the underlying causes on your own, or something changes in your external circumstances.

If your sense of overwhelm is caused by a lack of priorities, even changing your job to a much less stressful one might not completely erase the problem. Because we live in a time when almost everyone has too many things they could do, learning to prioritize is a crucial life skill for the 21st century.

How to heal the root causes of your overwhelm, and what to expect if you do:

To solve the issue you are facing, you need to learn how to differentiate between priorities and to-dos, and then follow through on completing your priorities.

You also need to set appropriate boundaries with other people so you can stay focused on your goals.

Lastly, having too much to do has likely left you tired and drained, so you will also need to learn how to rest and recover.

Once you address these underlying causes, you can start to reduce your pile of undone tasks, and in the process create more time and energy for what really matter to you in all areas of life. Instead of just putting our fires, you can start to work on creating the life of your dreams—your ability to prioritize will help you with that.

In other words, your life can get a lot better!

If you would like me to help guide you through this process, please read on:

Let me guide you from the fog of overwhelm to clear purpose... right on time to confidently usher in 2026!

If you'd like to go from overwhelmed to on-top-of-things, I'd love to help you finish this year strong, and start 2026 with a cleaner slate!

If you don't know me: Hi, I'm Dr. Louise Schriewer, a lawyer and academic turned professional wizard (I mean, coach...). I have been a coach since 2016. In 2018, I discovered and got certified in an exciting new modality: text-based habit coaching. Since then, I have been helping hundreds of people like you through text-based coaching.

You can find some of their success stories and testimonials at the bottom of this page. 

How does this flexible, text-based coaching work?

• 6 weeks of external accountability and soulful guidance from a certified habit coach,
• maximum flexibility so you can contact me when it best works for you,
• regular check-ins and support (I'm available Monday-Friday), and
• links to additional resources as needed.

How my compassionate, text-based coaching has helped other people improve their productivity:

"I had a great experience working with Bere in the last year of my PhD. I received productivity coaching from Bere for 9 months, during which I finished lab experiments, published a peer-reviewed research paper in my target journal, and and wrote my dissertation (160+ pages).

Throughout this process, Bere was a consistent source of positivity and motivation.

Bere was very flexible in the face of diverse challenges I faced, helping me manage a large workload and many competing commitments with a variety of tools. With Bere's help, I was able to prioritize/delegate tasks, build momentum for long-term projects, and deal with setbacks (major and minor) in a self-compassionate manner."

Cat

"Coaching with Bere has been a godsend. She has helped me grow dramatically in terms of focus, setting and reaching goals, and deepening my love for my work. I've found Bere to be kind, sensitive, motivating, and inspiring. I highly recommend her as a
productivity/career/life coach!"

Kellum

"Bere has been very helpful in giving me practical tools to create small cumulative changes. They've really added up. Good habits that felt impossible to cultivate when I started with her are now becoming matters of course in my daily life. It's a great feeling! I feel ready now to face the next steps she has helped me set up."

Anonymous

"Bere has been helping me set my priorities for the day to be optimally productive. It has really helped me to dissect my day and examine the patterns that get in the way of productivity. Through my work with Bere, I'm trying to achieve a good balance between work that addresses others' needs and work that is consistent with my own career goals as an academic and an administrator. Bere's suggestions are helping me shift toward achieving that balance."

Stacy

"Bere's support and accountability coaching has helped me to get through a few hectic months, and finish everything from taxes to submission of my PhD thesis!

Here are some ways our work has really helped me:
1. Understanding how my habits fall into the four tendencies framework, and learning to use the framework to benefit from my tendencies that rather than fight against them.
2. Bere's check-ins suggestions and follow-ups have helped me keep up with the priorities that I set. It been nice to have her to check in with, and has spared friends and family from having to hear my running to do list because i feel finally like ive got it under control. It is also nice to have a safe and judgement free environment for priority setting.
3. Thanks to our work together I have a much better sense of what a priority should look like, and a manageable number I can realistically expect to accomplish.
4. The chat history in the app has helped me monitor how realistic my expectations have been."

Anonymous

"We switched goals around a bit depending on what I was struggling with. We worked with sleep and weekly/daily goals.

Bere was sympathetic and non-judgmental. She was also very positive and upbeat about trying again, trying something new, or learning from the past.

I made a 2-3 big gains while working with her."

Anonymous

"Bere truly did help me look into and start my routine, for that I am very much appreciative and will probably always feel in debt to her. She's a very helpful, kind, responsive, active coach that will help kick you into gear on whatever project you've been wanting to start!"

Lauren

"Bere was absolutely fantastic! I really enjoyed her encouragement and insight. In a short time Bere has brought me from total chaos to heading down the right path. Definitely recommend her!”

Candy

"Bere was helpful and patient. She helped me kickstart important habits when I was struggling to wake up in the morning and have any sort of routine."

Rosalia

"Bere was great on keeping me motivated and focusing on my goals, I can't recommend Bere enough! She is great at helping you set priorities for your day, you definitely won't regret having her as a Coach."

Jonathan

"Bere was able to give me some great tools in an online environment, which helped with accountability and thought processes. Thank you!"

Kristy

"Bere helped me set priorities and manage my time better while I was trying to get multiple things done including a move- her suggestions and daily advice and reminders were very helpful!"

Anonymous

"Berenike is insightful and helpful!"

Alva

"Bere gave great time management tips and was great about providing positive accountability for me."

Anonymous