Before Saying 'Yes' to Another Project...
Two questions I use to manage my tendency to overcommit
Here we are again. Summer is beginning its march toward Labor Day weekend. School is starting or will be soon. And September’s back-to-the-grind vibes are creeping up on us.
This is prime time for overcommitting—taking on more projects, bigger goals, or more aggressive timelines than we have the capacity for. We know overcommitment makes us stressed, tired, and often, emotionally depleted. We know we’re supposed to find some semblance of balance amidst our many responsibilities, paid or otherwise. We know that taking care of ourselves is the only way we can keep showing up.
And yet, for all that knowledge, many of us end up overcommitted again and again. In my book, I attribute this to a phenomenon I’ve dubbed the Validation Spiral.
The Validation Spiral begins early in life. We learn that certain behaviors result in praise—they make us feel useful and valuable. Maybe we ace a big test, hit a home run, take care of a younger sibling, or win a seat on the student council. Praise makes us feel good for a while, and then we return to baseline—eager to seek out more praise so we can return to the high of recognition.
Typically, that initial quest for validation is manageable. The next test or report card, game or meet, chore or responsibility is always around the corner. We take it in stride. But as we get older and life becomes less predictable, we start to seek out validation in less sustainable ways. We stack responsibility on top of responsibility, hoping that we'll be able to prove ourselves worthy—of praise, of success, of happiness.
In other words, we overcommit.
We say 'yes' too many times and fill our lives with the detritus of our validation-seeking.
Here is where our overcommitment becomes our undercommitment. When we're overcommitted, our resources are stretched too thin. I use the word “resources” to encompass anything we make use of in life and work, including time, money, emotional bandwidth, support, skills, etc. We simply don't have what we need to do everything we've said 'yes' to well. So we allocate our relatively meager resources to each responsibility and most, if not all, of those responsibilities don't receive their due.
As a result, we feel like we're always falling short. Like success is always just out of reach. As if the validation—internal or external—we seek remains inaccessible.
Or as
put it recently:...overcommitting benefits no one. It leaves me stressed out and exhausted. Instead of pleasing everyone, I tend to disappoint the people closest to me.
When we disappoint ourselves and the people we're committed to, it certainly doesn't help our self-worth or desire for validation.
It's easy to interpret this as a personal deficiency. But there are many systemic and structural reasons we enter the Validation Spiral. "Validation-seeking" is certainly coded as a negative personality trait—but I see it more as a logical response to an uncertain and often hostile social and economic environment.
Instead of diving into the structural and systemic foundation of our tendency to overcommit today, I want to share two questions I've found effective in combatting this pattern. The first is, "But why?" And the second is, "Do I have what I need to do this well?" Both questions encourage us to hit pause on our reflex to pile on more and more commitments so we can fully evaluate whether saying 'yes' will serve us—and others.