The way I understood this: "If you are overworked, first look at your team, is everyone at their place and pulling their weight, evaluate your deadlines and promises, check your planning and management and your relationship with stakeholders. Because most of the times it's one of those things that's broken and probably affects the rest".

Theoretically, it might not be a good reason to hire. Maybe the problem is bad planning or project management. Hiring more people won't really solve that.

But, in general, I agree with you.

That's your (negative) take on it. You can do something about being overworked without hiring (evaluate deadlines and scope, learn to say no). There's a good chance that hiring people without establishing the underlying cause of "being overworked" will only lead to more people being overworked. If you're hiring because of "being overworked", you're hiring too late.

Rereading the advice, I think he means hire before you get to overworked. I agree it's phrased poorly.