How to stop overworking and under-serving

Because of societal expectations, learned behaviors, and even the way our brains are naturally programmed due to the laws of nature and evolution, most of the things we do every day are automatic. If they weren’t, we would be expending much more energy just trying to keep up with our daily survival. It’s important to know this because even in our work habits, we may be overworking in some areas of our life which might be leading to underserving our communities.

This blog post will be used to identify and give insight into some of those behaviors. Through gaining some awareness around these behaviors, my goal is for you to gain at least one extra hour of your day back.

Perfectionism

One of the biggest pitfalls to progress is becoming stuck in perfectionist thinking. When we attempt to create perfection before taking action on a decision, we will lose so much precious time. When I was a full-time violinist preparing large programs for multiple concerts at once, I had to learn the skill of demanding efficiency from myself. If I got caught up in simply playing through pieces or working on the same things over and over again without moving on to other challenges, I wouldn’t get to all of the music I needed to study.

Working on weaknesses more than strengths

I learned this concept from James Clear, who teaches that you will be able to achieve much more by focusing on working with your strengths rather than strengthening your weaknesses. As humans, we are a complex organism of unsolvable problems. We could spend all day every day solving the problem that is us, but by doing this, growth is so much harder and slower. It’s like trying to create a spark over and over for an infinite number of small fires rather than pouring gasoline on an existing one.

Abusing Time

If you aren’t familiar with Parkinson’s Law, it is the idea that work expands or contracts in order to meet the time constraints placed on it. When we allow ourselves too much time on a project, there are more opportunities for us to procrastinate or work on trivial matters. Think about a time when you were given a deadline for work or school. You were probably given several days, a few weeks, or even several months. Now think about the actual amount of time that you spent on the project itself – specifically, the time that actually contributed to the final product. My guess is that the time spent was more like hours rather than days. I learned the concept of choosing ahead of time how long something will take from my mentor and coach, Brooke Castillo. By taking ownership around the amount of time something takes, not only do we produce so much more, our quality has the potential to improve AND we learn so much about ourselves and our own capabilities in the process.

Meeting or problem-solving without an agenda

When I was an elite performing artist, I had a professor who chastised me for not having an agenda when I entered the practice room. I was in the habit of practicing 3-4 hours a day and I usually had a rough outline of how I would spend that time in my head. But he taught me a lesson I would never forget, “You would NEVER go into a 4-hour professional meeting without an agenda. And yet as violinists, we do it all the time. And so much time gets wasted.” I vowed never again to do that to myself and in transitioning to a career in administration, that habit has served me very well, earning myself a reputation amongst my colleagues of being highly organized so when I invite someone to a 10-minute, 30-minute, or one-hour meeting, they know that I will not be wasting one second of their time.

Not planning your day ahead of time

Along with abusing time, practicing or meeting without an agenda, many of us also tend to go into our day without planning it ahead of time. There are studies that have proven that organized behaviors lower stress levels. By planning your days to the minute, there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to achieve or create any result that you want in your life. I will be doing another post in the future to share my time management systems to go into greater detail about this so stay tuned.

Not “Super Thinking”

When we are asked to create a project, many of us tend to dive in and “get to work” looking for the right answers without first creating for ourselves the opportunity to do super thinking or ask our own brains for its creative solutions and ideas. You would be surprised at the incredible volume and capacity of your brain to process, synthesize, and compute solutions and ideas simply by asking it to. There’s a lot of information in the world. Much of our time is spent trying to find answers to our questions and getting stumped on rabbit holes rather than by asking ourselves for them. Take this post for example. I have consumed and practiced A LOT of information around Life Coaching and Self-Help. I trusted that my brain would produce what I needed if I invited it to. I went for a 15-minute walk, asked myself a lot of questions, and answered them out loud speaking into the voice memo recording app on my phone. And now, here I am writing this post in the hour that I allotted for myself. Had I done a Google search and started reading articles, I would’ve wasted so much time and missed out on an opportunity to develop and share from my own unique experiences.

Too much time learning, not enough time implementing

Speaking of Google search, like many of you, I am guilty of spending more time learning and less time implementing. I have a close friend who has spent a lot of time in school, switching from career to career. They are incredibly smart but by not committing to a decision or implementing the work that they have learned, they have missed out on so many opportunities for career advancement because of their insecurity around the things they don’t think they know enough about yet to make a contribution. Ironically, despite the number of degrees that this person has, they have less confidence and have produced less professionally than some of my colleagues who have one or even fewer.

Over-analyzing a problem or a solution

There comes a point in every reflection that we need to make a decision on how to move forward with a solution to a problem. If we spend too much time over-analyzing a problem, we miss out on the additional data and information we collect by taking future action. Creating a system for analyzing what went wrong doesn’t need to be complicated. Most of the time, data can be collected in a series of simple questions like, for example, my favorite three-part reflection and adaptation process: 1) what went well, 2) what could be improved, 3) what is one thing that we can adapt today?

Ruminating on doubt, fear, shame, or regret

Doubts are not a problem that need to be solved. You can take action while feeling doubt. Same with fear, shame, or regret. These famous four emotions are the traps that I refer to in my Life Coaching practice as the main barriers to our goal achievement. It can feel helpful to focus on the thoughts creating these emotions. I do believe that by gaining awareness around the thoughts causing these feelings can be helpful to an extent. But oftentimes we treat these emotions like they are circumstances that need to be solved. Yes, we can change thoughts creating doubt or fear or shame or regret but I’ve found it more effective for me to challenge those thoughts with simple counter beliefs. For example: “I could be wrong but I will learn either way.” OR “I can act in accordance with my goals even if I feel doubt that it will work.” Eventually what happens is that we create new evidence through our actions to counter the old beliefs.

Catastrophizing AKA planning for the worst-case scenario

Catastrophizing is the act of jumping to the worst-case scenario. The worst thing we can do for ourselves is planning for the worst-case scenario rather than planning for the best-case scenario. Our brains are marvelously intuitive and innovative. Were we truly presented with a “worst-case scenario” (which I would argue only exists as worst-case scenarios in our minds), our brains have evolved to create solutions for survival. However, many of us will never actually be presented with the worst-case scenario. Maybe a version of an inconvenient scenario but not something that we could adequately prepare for. Rather than devoting all of that time to planning for the worst-case scenario, instead redirect that energy to solving and planning for the best-case scenario. The best-case scenario is you achieving your goals.

Mind reading

Most of the thoughts that we imagine others to have are projections of what we think about ourselves. It is always better to focus on our relationship with ourselves rather than imagining what others might be saying or thinking about what we do. Many entrepreneurs who put themselves and their content out there on social media for the first time will comment on how when they receive negative comments, it’s never on what they thought they would receive negative comments around. This goes to show that even when you do plan for someone to say something negative about you, you might still be wrong.

Focusing on restrictions and not enough on replacing activities

This is a big one. The best example I have of this is going on a diet. It’s a lot harder to go on a restrictive diet than adding more to your diet. If you are working hard and planning ahead to get the right amount of protein, carbs, and nutrients a day, drinking the appropriate amount of water, and getting 7-9 hours of sleep, your body will be so much happier and healthier. As a result, letting go of highly processed foods or foods with higher sugar or caffeine content will be easy, simply because you will find yourself without the same urges or cravings. I apply this concept to my time and my work. Rather than spending time scrolling through social media or other unhelpful distractions while I work, I continually ask myself questions that demand more from my brain.

Working on confidence before taking action

There is confidence and self-confidence. Confidence comes from having done something successfully. Self-confidence comes from the willingness and trust in yourself to feel and process any emotion, especially more uncomfortable/negative emotions. Self-esteem is the relationship we develop with ourselves through the way we treat ourselves, i.e. how we talk to ourselves, take care of ourselves, and think about ourselves. It’s important that we first make this distinction. Once the distinction is made, it’s obvious that trying to be confident before taking an action is a losing battle. It’s more important to develop self-confidence and self-esteem first. Even more importantly, if we are struggling with the opposite of confidence – like imposter syndrome, doubt, or fear – it’s helpful to develop the skill of courage or taking action in spite of fear.

Pushing through burnout

Burnout is a serious condition worth examining before long-term consequences set in. Stress is related to a number of long-term health problems so getting it under control is one of the most important things we can do to increase our longevity and overall health and energy levels. When we push through burnout, we ultimately lose effectiveness in all of our endeavors and may ultimately lose out on precious time in the recovery process.

Not setting boundaries

Boundaries are us taking action to take care of ourselves if someone violates a boundary. By not setting or keeping our personally set boundaries, we set ourselves up for wasting enormous amounts of time and energy.

Ruminating in overwhelm

Overwhelm is usually the result of the lack of clarity or allowing ourselves to be confused – both of which are problems that can be solved. I often hear people talk about themselves with the identity of being overwhelmed, i.e. “I am so overwhelmed right now!” Being overwhelmed is a you problem and an indulgent emotion. When we take ownership of our overwhelm, we create order out of chaos and thus move on to finding solutions rather.

Indecisiveness

Indecisiveness leads to inaction, therefore decisive action is key to faster progress. I know people who proudly identify as someone who is indecisive. This is not something to be proud of as it tends to waste not only your time but is the definition of underserving. I am certainly guilty of being indecisive, especially when I try new things. However, when we are decisive we create power in the decision. Additionally, decisiveness tends to breed more decisive decision making.

Optimizing too many things at once

My gold star students often overwhelm and confuse themselves by making too many changes and optimizing too many things at a time. This more often than not will lead to quitting or messy results. When you are in the process of adapting something, it is better to implement small or singular changes that you can monitor progress around.

Not addressing addictions

It’s important to recognize when you might be addicted to something whether it be a behavior or a substance. Recognizing our unhealthy compulsive dependency on something can create problems in our workflow and limit our capacity to serve. An addiction is a prime example of overworking on our dependency to dopamine rather than other more sustainable fuels for our socially impactful work.