I had a client, Sarah, come to me a few months ago with a pretty tricky issue.
She told me that she had way too much going on at work. She had 10 plates spinning, and she was struggling to keep them all in the air. And yet, she continued to say yes to projects. She was living in a constant state of overcommitment.
As a result, she had no time for herself. She was aging prematurely and her health was suffering. She was starting to feel pretty fed up, too. Like many of us, she was thinking “Shouldn’t it be getting easier to manage my commitments as I get more successful? Why is it just getting harder?”
Sarah is more the rule than the exception. Did you know the United States is the only industrialized country in the world without a legal maximum amount of hours you can work per week? On average, professionals work enough hours a week to equal an entire extra work day!
As a professional productivity coach, I see this problem time and time again with my new clients.
Sarah needed something to change. But the truth about overcommitment is hard to hear. We’re taught to be “yes men” from a very young age. It should be no surprise that some of the most successful people are chronically overcommitted -- it’s what we’ve been raised to do!
This is only compounded by the fact that in today’s knowledge economy, it’s become a lot harder to see our results right away. We aren’t factory workers with a product quota of the day. Our success is based on how much our boss likes us and how much we’re getting paid.
But constantly saying yes to everything isn’t pushing us forward. In fact, it’s keeping you from growing, fast-tracking you to burnout and reinforcing a slough of mindset issues.
Here are the three most common reasons that you overcommit:
1.You love starting new projects, but you don’t love finishing them.
Starting a new project is exciting. You see all its potential, and the initial phases of the process are fun! But when problems come up or you don’t see results right away, it gets harder and harder to stick it out. So your projects grind to a halt, and progress ceases.
And why is that? It’s because it’s a lot easier to say yes. The beginning phases of a project are a lot easier than the later phases. It’s much more challenging to see your existing projects through to the end. Your knee-jerk reaction is to escape that pain and move towards something new and exciting.
Seeing existing projects through to the end is a mindset muscle that you have to commit to developing, and it takes a lot of practice. If you can fall in love with finishing projects, the rewards are tremendous.
2.You don’t feel like you’re doing enough.
Do you ever get to the end of your week, look back at what you’ve accomplished, and think, “I could have done better”?
At its core, this has to do with you feeling like you’re “enough” -- like the work you’re doing matters, like people are recognizing your hard work and rewarding you for it.
This is a trap that a lot of us get sucked into. And we think that in order to get out of it, we just need to commit to more. Work more. Try and accomplish more. Because then maybe we can finally look back at our week and think, “I’m finally getting enough done!”
Of course, that feeling never comes until we address the core mindset issue at fault here.
3.You’re afraid of success.
What would happen if you were to fully commit to just one thing? To go all in. How would that affect your work? Your life?
The fear of this question is what keeps a lot of people in a constant state of overcommitment. In fact, you might be actively sabotaging your success by purposely biting off more than you can chew.
Status quo is your comfort zone, and committing fully to one thing that could accelerate you forward means getting way outside that zone. It’s scary!
When you say yes to everything, rack up dozens of commitments and keep yourself spread thin, you can avoid asking these questions. You create an excuse for not leveling up.
The truth about overcommitment is hard to hear, but personal growth requires a willingness to embrace reality. My client, Sarah, disappoints a lot of people by declining to commit to their projects. But her new book was just sent to her publisher, and she’s on track to blow her one-year goals out of the water.
Which would you prefer?
