One solution: Start fewer things:

There’s a “predisposition of humans to underestimate the time it takes to complete a thing” called the planning fallacy, which leads us to overcommit to opportunities at the expense of actually completing them, said Greg McKeown, author of “Essentialism” (one of my favorite books).

“It’s so deep in us,” he said, “you can know about it and even understand the principle, and you’ll still do it.”

I needed to read an article like this today. I wish I had read such an article many years ago when I was in college.

My favorite technique to deal with being overwhelmed when I have overextended myself is to break down all the big tasks into tiny, tiny microtasks, and knock them off one by one. I use todo.txt to help keep track of it all.