Only The Curious

You’ve set your goals, and whittled down the thousands of things you could be doing to just the things that are useful to you. You’ve listened to your gut (not your parents or co-workers) and you’re only doing the things of those useful activities that you really, actually, WANT to be doing and are excited about. You’ve even balanced out your schedule and held off on a few things that meet the first two criteria, because you’re being aware of your time and energy level.

And then you stop wanting to go to something. Or you consider calling in sick or just skipping a game to go do something else.

Once we’ve filled our nicely-balanced schedule with things that are fun, useful, supportive, and inspiring to us, the pottery class that’s at the same time as our networking group meeting can start to look greener. So what’s important is to regularly re-evaluate.

First, check in with your gut. Any time I find myself not wanting to go to a frisbee game or choir rehearsal, or making excuses of why it would be okay to skip this week, I stop and listen. Where is that “I don’t wanna” voice coming from? Is this just me not wanting to go run in the heat, or is it an ongoing thing? If I get the “I don’t wanna” voice three times, I quit. Because there’s a reason it’s piping up.

When that gut feeling of excitement starts to be replaced by a lack of enthusiasm – or worse – dread, review your goals. Why did you start that activity in the first place? Have you gotten out of it what you wanted to? If not, can you approach the commitment differently so that you’re aiming for that goal? If so, maybe it’s time to quit.

It’s easy to fill our time with things we don’t actually want to be doing because they’re a continuation of something we originally did. It’s important to know when it’s time to drop a commitment.

Barbara Sher talks a lot about how we scanner types often feel like failures, because we quit things or don’t finish them to everyone else’s concept of completion. Her point is that once we’ve gotten what we needed or wanted out of a particular engagement, there’s no reason to feel bad about leaving it early or unfinished. Knowing what your goal for an activity is or was will help you to realize when a particular commitment is no longer serving you.

For example, I joined a choir last fall. I’ve always sung in choirs, so when I moved to Denver, one of the first things I did was to seek out a new one. But after a few weeks, I found myself not really wanting to go to rehearsal. At first I thought that maybe it was because it was on Sunday nights and I just wanted to get ready for my week. While that was partially true, I’d been in Sunday choirs before and had enough enthusiasm to forego spaghetti night at mom and dad’s to get to rehearsal.

So I sat with it. And I realized that while the choir was accomplishing some of the goals I had for it – I was meeting people, learning new music, continuing to develop my voice – it wasn’t accomplishing the most important one. I wasn’t having fun. And it was getting draining.

But I made the mistake of not just quitting, I kept letting the “shoulds” get in the way: “It’s the best group around, I should stick with it,” “I’ve been singing for 15 years, I shouldn’t quit one of the best groups I’ve been with now,” and then there was the fear voice: “what if I don’t find anything better?” Shoulds and fears are not the best voices of reason. And they’re definitely not going to give you the best advice on how to be happy and productive.

What I learned from the experience was to act more quickly. Continuing to go to something that was no longer serving me was draining. And what’s worse, instead of quitting at a semester break or with an official announcement, eventually the lack of enthusiasm got to me and I just stopped going. No notice. Mid-season. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Don’t let yourself get to the point of burning bridges. If your interest starts to wane and the activity isn’t serving you anymore, get out at the soonest possible clean break moment that you can.

Don’t feel guilty if you quit. It’s okay to be a little bit defensive of and selfish with your time. The reality is, they’ll go on with out you. They were doing it before you came in. We’d all like to think we’re so important, and yes, people will probably miss you or your contributions, but they’ll survive.

After I quit the choir, I felt bad about the few friends I’d made there and had “bailed” on. But I didn’t miss it. And that’s the best sign that you made the right choice. Now you’ve cleared out a space in your time: go find something else that is more in alignment with your goals and energizing for you!

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Opportunities tend to come in waves, following the season for rec sports, the schoolyear, etc. Which is why I learned to only make one commitment at a time. It’s easy to get to the beginning of a season or semester and pile on five new things.

The problem with adding a bunch of activities at once is that you don’t really know things like how long it’ll take you to drive to each one, how much energy it’ll take, or if you’re even going to like it and stick with it.

In college I would join a whole bunch of things at once. But suddenly extra meetings would come up, or something would get re-scheduled, and it would throw off my precariously balanced schedule. By adding only one thing at a time, we can be more conscientious about what kind of commitment we’re actually making to the other people involved, we can be more flexible and responsive to the group’s needs, and we will be more realistic about how much time and variability in the schedule is involved with a particular activity.

When you join something, and the first time you go, keep track of how long it takes you to get there. Is there variable traffic? Is it easy to park? How much extra time would you need if it was snowing or there was a big event that would slow your route?

Notice your energy level, particularly if your commitment is physically demanding. For example, I play in a Wednesday night frisbee league in another city. Then I agreed to start working doing massage on Thursdays. It turns out that playing frisbee on Wednesday nights wears me out, especially because it’s a long drive back and I get home late. Turning around and doing massage on Thursdays wasn’t going to work; I was exhausted and sore, and not able to give my clients my best. So I had to pick between them, or find a way to get more rest.

It’s important to be conscientious of our energy, and factor that into our commitments. Even if you have the ability to get to everything on time, do you have enough time to be prepared for each commitment, both physically and mentally? If not, you’ll get overwhelmed even with a well-organized schedule full of things you’re excited about.

Balancing our time and energy is a big part of not being overcommited. You have to be both conscientious and realistic about how much you can successfully do in one day. This is also part of why it’s so important to only do things that we want to and that are serving our goals: those things will energize us, and spending any significant time doing things we don’t want to will drain us. Realistically, if you’re doing things you love, you’ll be able to do more in general. But keep that in balance too, and only make commitments to things you can realistically reliably get to, be on time for, and be fully present for.

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We all know that goalsetting is important for success. It gives us something to strive for, and helps us have a direction. Goals play into avoiding overcommitment in three ways:

1) Having goals helps us choose our activities wisely. In the previous post, I talked about how I used to do a lot of things because I thought I “should.” The reality is that there are hundreds of things we could do because they’ll help us to be more fit, they’ll make us smarter, they’d be good opportunities, etc. The only way to sift through everything and know which ones will be the most beneficial is to know what we’re trying to accomplish in the first place.

This means that not only do we need to have goals, we need to have specific goals. For example, if I have a goal of “being more fit” that only directs me toward fitness-related activities. It doesn’t help me sort through which ones will help the most. But if my goal is “to be stronger” then I’ll know to focus on strength training, not the cardio. If my goal is more specific still and I say “I want to have stronger arms” then I’ll know to only look for classes/programs that focus on arms.

Fitness, I know, may not be the best example, because a well-rounded fitness program is the way to go and all that. So say your goal is “to build my network.” There are tons of meetups, professional groups, etc. Be more specific. What kind of a network are you trying to build, and why? Are you trying to get more clients, or is your goal to meet a tech person who can help you with your website? The more specific you are with your goals, the more specific you can be in only making commitments to things that support what you are trying to do. And this is how you avoid spending lots of time running around to events that turn out not to be pertinent, boring, or a waste of your time.

If a commitment doesn’t serve one of your goals, it’s not worth spending your time on right now. And it’s okay for one of your goals to be some version “to have fun” or “to do something that inspires my creativity” or “to meet like-minded women I can become friends with.” Not all of our commitments have to be oriented toward our work-life or ambitions. But they do all need to be serving a specific purpose in order for us to make the best, most wonderful use of our time.

2) Once we have made a commitment, knowing our goal for the activity will help us to stay on track, maintain productivity, and feel accomplished in having made the commitment. Being an ENFP/scanner it’s still easy to get distracted. As much as I believe that when we only make commitments that we want to, we’ll always want to be there, it’s just not true. There will always be other things that come up that sound fun or interesting or helpful that happen at the same time as something we’re already doing. Knowing your goal for a specific commitment will help you stay committed to it, until you’ve gained what you want to out of it. It will also streamline your activity, so that you’re getting what you actually want out of a commitment.

For example, if you go to that networking meeting with the goal of finding a web guy/gal to help you out, you might meet tons of other fascinating people and never meet that web person. But if you keep your goal in mind, you can meet those other people, but also keep asking if they know the kind of person you’re seeking. If you find that person, at the end of the day you’ll go home feeling good about having gone to that meeting and accomplishing what you set out to.

So to review, strategy #1: only do it if you really want to. Strategy #2: have a goal, both for the big picture and for each specific commitment. Stay tuned for strategy #3: be willing to re-evaluate, and know when to quit.

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