Here’s what a client said about overcommitment and overscheduling too many priorities that really hit me in my core:

“I genuinely thought I could do all these.”

Ouch. Me too, friend, me too. It’s taken me a long time to (un)(re)learn myself. Unweaving imposterism myths of academia. Unlearning hyperproductivity of toxic capitalism. Unfucking my mindset from sexist notions of superwoman/supermom. Separating my worthiness out from faux praise and BS rewards - like more responsibility but no pay increase - that came when I overed.

Overcommitting is part of overestimating our capacity. When so much of our worth is tangled up in how much we can accomplish, we overestimate our capacity, conflate it with our actual capability, and then beat ourselves down when we fail to get everything done.

I think it is normal to overestimate our capacity. It’s really hard to self-assess and develop feedback loops that give you honest, accurate data. How many times have you thought, “I have an hour, I can get x, y, z, a, b, and c done.” And then you maybe make it halfway through x. (And then proceed to judge and critique yourself for not getting the rest of it done!)

Overestimating capacity and not being able to complete everything is not an indicator of capability. Overestimating your capacity is just a factor of the human brain and a greedy system that wants more and more of your labor. This is where I see folks wrongly personalize worthiness, ability, and belonging.

Remember:

There’s too much shit we are being asked to do. Period.
There’s also too much shit we are expecting ourselves to do.

Anyone who does anything creative (that’s all of you) needs visioning and dreaming time, which isn’t easily measurable by outcome metrics.

There’s an abundance of comparison and false narratives on social media - example: we see a finished product but not how much time went into it or it’s been time lapsed.

Some of us, including me, struggle with single-task focusing–so in an hour’s time I will touch (but not complete) 10+ different tasks rather than systematically going through them. I’ve been working to retrain those patterns with tools that work so that I’m getting things done and gathering data about what I can reasonably accomplish in a set period of time.

I also see so many folks take something that’s actually a project and turn it into a task. You underestimate the number of actual tasks needed to complete that project-task, so your to-do list keeps growing. Despite your best efforts and intentions, you never get caught up. It’s time to shift out of this cycle.

We each have a limit to our brain power, energy (physical, emotional and mental), time, and resources. Yes, all that can regenerate when we build in rest and restorative time. And when we don’t build in that rest and restorative time every day, we start the next day on reserve battery power and you know how that goes.