Published Sept 2026
You know this scene from I Love Lucy. Lucy and Ethel take jobs as wrappers at a candy factory, and they’re stationed at a conveyer belt. They’re warned that if they fall behind, they’re fired.
At first, Lucy & Ethel can handle the workload, but soon the belt speeds up. Hilarity ensues as they desperately stuff their mouths, hats, and shirts with the candies they don’t have time to wrap.
The further behind they get, the harder it is to catch up, and the bigger the mess they make.
This scene is 74 years old. It still holds up because (a) Lucy and Ethel are brilliant physical comics and (b) it’s relatable. We all know what it is to be overwhelmed.
The difference, of course, is that in real life, it’s not even remotely funny.
The science behind overwhelming grief
Overwhelm happens when incoming mental, emotional, or sensory input exceeds your brain's capacity to process it, triggering a fight-flight-or-freeze response. It’s essentially a ratio of inputs to capacity, and when that ratio gets top-heavy, we’re in trouble.
“Overwhelmed” is the emotional state I see most often in executors who are responsible for settling a loved one’s affairs after a loss.
That’s because incoming inputs are spiking at the same time that capacity diminishes. There are disruptive forces on both sides of the ratio.
You’ve heard me share that executors spend 570 hours on average settling a loved one’s affairs. Undermountain Partners’ after-loss database includes ~360 potential “tasks” that families may have to complete. That’s a lot of inputs (or candies on the conveyer belt).
At the same time, the death of a loved one requires our brains to rewire themselves to adjust to our new reality, which takes a massive amount of background processing power. Working memory–the system we use to hold information, process data, and connect ideas–is at (or over) capacity when we’re grieving. We don’t have the bandwidth to take on a speeding conveyer belt of duties, because we’re operating with a temporary cognitive deficit.
Balancing the load
There are a few things that can be done to reduce the load or increase the resources available to handle it. Here’s what that might look like for overwhelmed executors:
- Offload working memory. Get tasks, questions, deadlines, decisions, and loose ends out of your head and into one reliable external system.
- Reduce the incoming load. Triage aggressively. Ask: “Does this actually need attention today? This week? From me?” Postpone what can wait and delegate what someone else can handle.
- Reduce decision-making. Batch similar tasks, create simple rules, and focus on one category at a time instead of bouncing from bank account → funeral question → DMV → family text → credit card.
- Protect the capacity you have. Build periods in which you are deliberately not administering the estate. Sleep, food, movement, social connection, and breaks are critical when the brain is already under load.
Slow the conveyer belt
The mistake Lucy and Ethel make is trying to solve an impossible workload by moving their hands faster. Grieving executors can fall into the same trap. When tasks are arriving faster than your brain can process them, trying harder or moving faster may only create a bigger pileup.
The better strategy is to change the ratio: slow the conveyor belt, get some of the chocolates off the line, and protect the processing capacity you have left.
The work of settling an estate still has to get done. But it does not all have to be held in your head, decided today, or handled alone.
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For informational purposes only; not legal or financial advice.
Sources
John Sweller (1988), “Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4
Transactional Model of Stress and Coping. Richard S. Lazarus & Susan Folkman (1984), Stress, Appraisal, and Coping, https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-030-39903-0_215
O’Connor, M.F. (2021), “Grieving as a Form of Learning: Insights from Neuroscience Applied to Grief and Loss” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8858332/
EstateExec, “Estate Settlement and Executor Statistics” https://www.estateexec.com/Docs/General_Statistics