The Lure to Overcommit

Do you find yourself saying yes to every request from your boss or coworkers? Do you work nights and weekends to get the work done?

I used to overwork a lot. I thought that taking on more and more responsibilities would prove that I was competent, dedicated and worthy of a promotion, a raise or just my current job. It wasn’t until I hit a wall hard that I realized I was no longer able to keep up that exhausting pace.

A couple of recent items resonated a lot with my experience. In a Harvard Business Review piece, psychologist Israa Nasir unpacks the reasons we overcommit at work, signs of overcommitting and, most important, ways to trim our tendency and regain our well-being and productivity.

You’re familiar with societal, workplace and even peer pressure to stay busy (see Passion & Burnout and Time to Rescue Yours Truly). Years ago, I met periodically with a group of consultants. One member always asked me, “How many clients do you have now?” It felt like she was asking me to justify my existence by the metric of busyness.

Most of us also have internalized pressure to stay busy and overcommit (see Passion & Burnout and Time to Rescue Yours Truly). Nasir points out that early career professionals in particular may say yes too quickly, believing that it will prove their reliability and value to their employer.

In her book Toxic Productivity: Reclaim your time and emotional energy in a world that always demands more, she identifies three emotional dynamics influencing a tendency to overcommit at work:

·      Desire for validation

·      Fear of rejection or failure

·      Comparison with others

 Nasir lists a few signs of the tendency to overcommit:

·      Saying yes before assessing your capacity for more work

·      Prioritizing what feels “urgent” vs. what’s important

·      Working late or long hours to “catch up”

·      Feeling resentful and/or anxious when asked for help

·      Feeling worried or guilty when you have free time

MICRO-STEPS TO STOP OVERCOMMITTING

I really like Nasir’s recommendations on taking small steps to shift the tendency to take on too much.

·      Regularly assess your workload

·      Frequently check-in with yourself and ask if any of the emotional dynamics listed above might be in play

·      Let your supervisor know about your workload and decide on priorities

·      Give yourself time to reflect on your bandwidth, e.g., “I’ll check my schedule and get back to you in a day or two.” (I swear by this one)

STOP FIGHTING THE CLOCK – YOU WON’T WIN

The other item that resonated with me this week The Ezra Klein Show podcast for NYT subscribers. In the January 7 episode, Klein talks about his recent burnout and examines what contributed to it with Oliver Burkeman, author of Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Matters.

The conversation starts with how society got to the current state of unrealistic expectations around productivity, as evidenced by our obsession with time-saving apps.

Burkeman says the modern “race against time” feeds our compulsion to check effortful items off a to-do list as a way to EARN relaxation and joy.  In an aside, Klein notes that, like other things we do compulsively, ticking tasks off a list prompts a mild dopamine hit, our brain’s reward mechanism.

Citing research on productivity, Burkeman recommends we use the “3 to 4 hour rule” as much as possible. The rule says to take a break after working that amount of time -- regardless of whether a task is completed. We can come back to finish up after we’re refreshed.

“We need to admit that our work will never be done,” he says. It’s important to be honest about the physical, emotional and mental limitations on our productivity and, to the extent possible, focus on our most important activities. The episode is worth a listen.