Uncharted Worlds » Overload

Temptations to take on too much

Jennifer — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:32:10 +0000

Too busy already? But maybe you could just take on one more thing…

Today’s theme is some specific factors which have tempted me to overreach or overload myself.

I don’t think the catalogue of temptations will be the same for everyone as for me. But I do think that if I describe my ones, they will be usefully familiar to some other people too :-)

Some kinds of overload come from the universe throwing stuff at you - like the illness of a relative, or a work colleague leaving, or your house being flooded, or just a constellation of minor bits of entropy all happening in close succession. I don’t mean those.

What I’m talking about here is an overload you had some hand in creating for yourself. I mean those times when you “somehow can’t resist” taking on something else. (Generic “you” - not assuming that you personally are susceptible to this phenomenon :-) )

Ooh, a cool thing!

One main category of temptation for me is things which sound like they’d be cool. “Ooh, a cool thing!” or “Opportunities like this don’t come along every day“, or even “This one is too good to miss!”

Taking on one of these is not necessarily a mistake. It might be highly rewarding and a very good use of my time.

However, there are at least two mistakes waiting to be made here.

It’s only partly a cool thing, and it’s partly a tedious thing, and the ratio is not favourable.
It is indeed a cool thing, but it’s a side-track for me, and it takes attention and time away from other cool things which are more important.

Up my metaphorical sleeve, I have some further metaphors for this variety, which I’m saving for another day.

It would make sense…

The other main temptation for me is the idea that “it would make sense” for me to do something.

Or it might not happen

One version of this is “If I don’t do this good thing, nobody else will, and it won’t happen“. Having identified this as a very hooky hook, I’ve got better at unhooking myself from it. “Yep, it won’t happen. Too bad. Them’s the breaks. C’est la vie.”

Some people would suggest answering this kind of temptation with “No-one is irreplaceable”. But the fact is that sometimes, if you walk away, you won’t be replaced, and the idea or project will run aground for lack of your contribution.

So I find that a sounder basis for standing firm against this temptation is remembering all the other potential good things which aren’t happening either. I mean, why get hung up on this one? The world is full of wonderful projects which never got done!

Making the team work

The “… it won’t happen at all” is a particular case of a more generic thing about “the good of everyone”. I think a lot of people get talked into things on the grounds that it would make some collective project work. “We need a treasurer, and nobody else wants to do it.” “Someone has to do this complicated errand, and you’re the only person who’s free that day.” Slurp, slurp, the sound of the quicksand of temptation.

I find this line of reasoning is particularly hooky when it latches onto some skill or resource that I demonstrably have which not everyone has.

For some people, the main hook in that might be flattery - “… but you’re so good at that!”

For me, I think it tends to be more about privilege - “I had the privilege of an education that gave me these skills [subtext: so don't I have a duty to use them (here)?]” “Some people simply couldn’t make time for this job, and I could if I chose to [subtext: so oughtn't I?].”

I’m not saying there’s nothing to be said for “Do the job that’s at hand”. And of course I’m not saying that a desire to see a collective project work is an invalid motive for doing anything.

I’m saying that your contribution to the world doesn’t necessarily have to be this one, just because you could and it was there.

Some wise words from Howard Thurman:

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

He didn’t say “Don’t ask yourself what makes you come alive. Wait till someone else comes up with a job for you which no-one else wanted to do, and then go do that.”

Or take it from the Buddha:

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”

Perceptions

Another angle from which to investigate the same phenomenon is via the NLP concept of “Perceptual positions”. “First position” is being in touch with your own wishes and thoughts and feelings; “Second position” is imagining and empathising with another person’s reality; and “Third position” is an observer’s perception of the two (or more) of you, including how you interact.

(A while ago, I read a book where the author also suggested the concept of fourth and fifth positions. If I recall correctly, one of them was imagining how the situation might evolve over time, and the other was the background of the rest of the world - e.g. social rules, distribution of resources, etc. I thought that was useful. But I don’t remember now what book that was. Another version has fifth position as a “Universal position”, which for some people evidently has a religious or spiritual meaning. But anyway, at least those first three seem to be generally agreed on.)

I would say that it’s one of my strengths to perceive and imagine from positions other than “first”. Systems thinking seems to come natural to me (a.k.a. “seeing the big picture”).

But there’s a pitfall in having that natural inclination: sometimes it’s at the expense of remembering to check in with myself. Then I might come to the conclusion that, looking at the situation as a whole, it “obviously makes sense” for me to take on a particular task. Only later do I realise “Hang on a minute - I had no desire to do this at all!” But hey, it “obviously made sense” for me to do it. Hmmm.

Selfishness

I think a common strand running through all that area of “It would make sense…” and/or “For the good of everyone…” is a lack of clarity - for me, obviously, but I think in the whole of western culture as well - about what might be the most healthy and most ethical relationship between (a) one’s own wants and needs, and (b) those of other people.

I think the concept of “selfishness” probably deserves a whole article of its own in the fullness of time. But for now I’ll just refer to the often-made point that if you’re not taking good care of yourself, it’s unlikely that you’re doing your best work for other people either.

Adding to the catalogue

I think those are the main ones for me. But please feel free to add to the catalogue if you can identify some temptations of your own :-)

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The ten-point “Starty Stoppy Scale”

Jennifer — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:54:49 +0000

If you’d like to have “less on your plate”, then where are the richest opportunities for reclaiming some time?

One of the areas I want to write about on this blog is “Taking on too much”, and its unsurprising result, “Having too much to do”. This is a subject I’ve had many occasions to ponder :-)

I’ve more to say later about specific factors which have tempted me to overreach myself, but here to be going on with is a thing I invented in January 2006.

I was pondering the undeniable fact that, if you want to shrink your workload/overload, then

you’ve got to stop doing some things (either by finishing them, or just by stopping at some other point), and
at the same time you’ve got to refrain from taking even more on than you finish or stop.

What I realised is that some “Yes I’ll do that” decisions (or newly invented ideas/tasks) have much greater effect than others in increased time demands. And conversely, different types of “polishing something off” have greatly varying ability to shrink the workload.

In a moment of inspiration, I thought of inventing a thing a bit like the Beaufort Scale for wind speed, to assist me in thinking this through.

Unlike wind speed, it’s not really a one-dimensional variable, so the order I’ve put them in has a few points of “subjective judgement call”. But essentially, the aim is to identify the most worthwhile “wins” on the “stopping doing things” front, and the potentially most expensive temptations on the “starting new things” front.

The examples here are based on the ones I wrote down for myself, so they’re biased towards the kinds of things I personally might be doing. If you want to adapt it for yourself, you’d probably want to come up with your own examples.

Here’s the list. Lower numbers are workload-shrinkers, higher numbers are workload-increasers.

The “Starty Stoppy Scale”

Stop an ongoing commitment which would otherwise take more attention later.
E.g. bowing gracefully out of some team, group or committee.
Give away or recycle a possession which I don’t really need any more.
E.g. giving something away via Freecycle (or one of its equivalents).

E.g. recycling/shredding/binning papers.
Work towards finishing a task.
E.g. finishing a piece of writing.

E.g. giving someone a piece of information I’d promised them.
Reorganise or neatly store something which would otherwise be getting in my way or otherwise taking my time and/or attention.
E.g. going through a pile of papers and putting away the ones I’m keeping.

E.g. sorting my browser bookmarks.

E.g. creating a workable place to store some homeless possession(s).
Improve my local environment, in a way which has no significant implications for the outside world and only minor implications for my future workload.
E.g. tidy my desk.

E.g. put batteries on to charge.
Start something or do something, but it doesn’t matter if I never do any more on it after this burst of inspiration plays out, so the only cost is the time of that moment.
E.g. starting a piece of writing, but nobody knows, and if it stays unfinished, it’ll just stay on the computer somewhere.

E.g. research something which I might or might not want to buy or do at some point.

E.g. playing a solo game such as a computer game or puzzle, or filling in a crossword.
Start something which will require some dealing with later.
E.g. acquiring a possession.

E.g. undertaking to do something later.

E.g. emailing someone and starting a conversation which may (or will) continue later.
Start a substantial task, which will need a lot of work to be completed and will hang around until it’s done.
E.g. some big DIY thing.
Start a substantial task, which will need a lot of work to be completed and must be done either within a particular timescale or for other people who are counting on it (but which, like the previous type, does at least have an inherent ending).
E.g. undertaking to lead a workshop.

E.g. being on a team to run some kind of event.

E.g. taking on building a web site for someone.
Embark on a potentially endless series of commitments, which will require a type-1 extrication to stop. (”Set a plate spinning”.)
E.g. joining a committee.

E.g. joining a group, especially if there’s an expectation that you’ll participate regularly.

E.g. taking on the future maintenance & development of a web site or email list.

E.g. starting certain kinds of (personal) relationship.

How it worked for me in practice

You could call this a kind of consciousness-raiser rather than a set of rules. I wasn’t saying to myself “Never take on any of the more workload-adding ones” - the idea was simply to be more aware of the future implications when I was deciding what to do.

Not long after inventing this, I did resign from a couple of groups where I didn’t feel I’d contributed much. But no doubt there is more mileage for me in the principle yet - maybe posting it here will remind me to think of it more often :-)

I realised later that this also puts an interesting slant on things like doing puzzles on the computer. I don’t think those are necessarily always a waste of time anyway, because sometimes they’re more like a meditation, where my mind is processing something more substantial at the same time as playing them. But if and when they are a waste of time, at least they only waste the time you actually spend on them. They don’t sign away future time as well, like some kinds of sidetracks do.

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