Setting boundaries at work fails for reasons that have little to do with courage. People do not usually get overloaded because they cannot say no — they get overloaded because they say no in a form that invites negotiation, or they say it to someone who cannot action...
To recover a week that has gone off the rails, stop planning and start triaging. Rebuilding the original plan is the instinct and it is the wrong move, because the plan assumed days you no longer have. What you need is a 45-minute reset that decides what still gets...