Please stop overcommitting and doing a shitty job
Confessions of a Rice Senior: If you do a lot of things, I’m not all that impressed by you.
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You know him (or her — let’s go with that gender for the sake of simplicity and because I’m a girl). She is double majoring, of course, but on top of that, she’s president of three clubs, two of which she started. She advised for a residential college; she does “leadership” stuff; she says yes to everything. Half of your Facebook notifications are from her as she invites you to “like” pages, come to an event every other week, or as she posts a bagillion things about all the so many things that she’s doing. She’s probably a sophomore (but actually — that’s usually the year when people are the worst offenders of this phenomenon).
As she eats her lunch in five minutes in between meetings, she gets a little rush inside when her friends turn to her, admiring and wondering aloud: “How do you do it!? You just do so much!” She responds with some half prideful, half humble-stifling giggle: “I’m just so passionate about so many things!”
It is because of people like this — the Resume Builders — that we live in such a miserable world. And there are a LOT of these people, especially at top 20 universities.
(By the way, I totally used to be one of these people, but more about that in a future article.)
Despite how munificent these Resume Builder people seem, I no longer approve of this sort of lifestyle. These are the people who are putting their pride first before their actual measurable impact. They also commit without committing. And worst of all, these people waste their talent and passion by overcommitting and ultimately hurting themselves long-term.
Let me explain.
So, first off, why do people overcommit?
There are serious reasons to overcommit, like if you need to work multiple jobs to pay for your education or support your family, or if you’re in a time of hardship that requires you to periodically attend medical appointments while running on full steam. If you are in this kind of situation or you know someone in this situation, please disregard my crass judgments and skip this article altogether. But in the first world arena when the bottom half of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is taken care of, the main reason why people overcommit is that they want to be and/or seem successful/important.
Society tells us that successful people are busy. Think about the CEO’s, famous law firm partners, crazy celebrities, politicians, the rich and famous “leaders” of society. They’re just so successful that they’re super in demand, always taking phone calls, going to meetings, cutting ribbons, giving speeches, running shit like events and parties. Successful people just have so many successful things going on that they need to always be doing these successful people things. Heck, successful people don’t even have time to sleep! (More on that falsehood in another article.)
The main reason why people overcommit is that they want to be and/or seem successful/important.
Of course, no one who is a chronic overcommitted crony is going to tell you that the reason why they’re overcommitted is because they want to be/seem successful. Sometimes they won’t even admit it to themselves. Because let’s be real — that’s ‘murican (American) culture: Be ambitious. Get creds. Do all of the things. Get ahead.
So let’s go through all the reasons that people give themselves and others as to why they’re overcommitted, and then let me tell you why those reasons are dumb.
“I’m just so passionate about so many things!”
— Passionate Polly
If you’re really passionate about something, you’ll stop overcommitting and start cutting shit out of your life. Why? Because if you were ACTUALLY just so passionate about something, that means that it’s worth cutting everything else out because you are indeed SO passionate about a particular thing that you’re doing. It’s like people who go to monasteries to become monks — they’re so passionate (but like, calm passionate) about pursuing truth/meditation/prayer that they forsake a life of physical relations and rich food. They give up the outside world, and they fast and shave their heads (depending on their practice).
That’s a very dramatic example, but the point is, passion and ambition need to be focused in order to be effective. To be focused, you can’t be stretched thin; you can’t be stacking your resume blindly; you can’t be overcommitted.
But what if someone isn’t overcommitted among different “subjects” or “fields,” but within one?
“I just really want to make an impact in the world of x!”
— Eager Evan
Do you really? Because if you really cared about making an impact, I think you’d measure your impact by, well, your IMPACT rather than the number of things you’re doing in that field. How do you measure impact? You can use numbers. (Okay, so numbers don’t always suffice because humans have emotions, but numbers are a tool and provide a rough means of “measuring” impact.)
Let’s say you really want to make an impact in the world of medicine. So, you’re a premed student who does research, volunteers at a hospital, works various shifts with EMS, and is planning not one service trip, but two (one for the summer and one for spring break). Whew — that’s a lot of shit, and I kid you not, I’ve seen people attempt this level of busy in the name of “making an impact.”
But if you REALLY wanted to make an impact, you’re better off doing maybe two of those things really, really well. Like, you could channel your energy into your research so that you can publish not one paper or zero papers, but two or three (numbers! measures impact!). You could also focus on making ONE service trip awesome and raising a TON of money for that service trip (money = numbers, numbers = impact). Now that you’ve drilled into the things you’re actually passionate about as a premed, you can take that extra time and study for the MCAT and focus on your grades, which, let’s face it, are pretty important for med school.
As another example, I’ve seen this Eager Evan problem happen a lot among people who are into social entrepreneurship. I think it’s because social entrepreneurship can indeed span so many different areas in and of itself: business, social welfare, nonprofits, engineering, medicine, etc. If you’re into social entrepreneurship, you might decide to start a nonprofit, plan a ton of events for a club, put together an initiative, or enter some business plan competition. The aggregate total of doing all of these things does not equal the amount of real impact you’d have if you just focused on one thing. There are some real life people who do JUST ONE of those sorts of activities as their full time job, and they still screw it up. I refuse to believe you’re doing the absolute best that you can do at any of those things if you’re doing all of them at once. You’re diluting your talent; you’re selling yourself short; you’re just stacking your resume.
But maybe your innate desire to make an impact is not really why you’re overcommitted. Maybe you’re overcommitted because…
“I really don’t know what I’m doing with my life, so I’m doing x, y, z, and a, b, c, just to cover my bases and find out.” — Unsure Sally
Argh gosh. Well, let me just say, you aren’t doing x, y, z, a, b, and c any favors by stretching yourself thin among them, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned above.
Basically, Unsure Sally is shooting herself in the foot as well as screwing anyone who is unfortunate enough to rely on her. She is probably the worst offender of overcommitment, because instead of being driven BOTH by passion for a thing and a desire to be successful, she’s driven almost entirely by that desire to achieve the label of success.
It’s okay to not know what you want to do with your time. But if you are unsure about what you’re doing with your life, you should JUST be trying some things rather than beating around the bush with a bunch of different things that may or may not look good on a resume. There is a difference between trying something out to see if you like it and weaseling your way into an official title with something you sort of like because you need shit on your resume.
Let’s take the example of joining a club. Let’s take BISF, the Baker Institute Student Forum, here at Rice for an example. Say you’re a student interested in policy and you’re trying to see if you are, indeed, passionate about policy. There is a big difference among the following activities:
a) consistently showing up to meetings to see what it’s all about
b) agreeing to plan an event with them
c) haphazardly showing up to meetings and then insisting upon getting a leadership or committee position
Options A and B are different levels of commitment that can allow you to try and see how you feel about BISF and what they stand for. Option C is usually what people do with a bunch of different organizations when they’re overcommitting. This is stupid, and it’s really easy to get really fed up with these types of people. Don’t be one of them.
Speaking of BISF, some policy-type people overcommit for the Unsure Sally reason when it comes to constructing their post-graduation plans. They spend college racking up accomplishments (a lot of which can be pretty cool) like planning events that bring in crazy famous policy people, interning in Washington DC, working abroad, writing papers, and running/participating in policy contests.
And then, come junior or senior year, when they aren’t quite sure what they want to do with the cool stuff that they’ve done, they go for ALL of the fellowships, apply for ALL of the types of grad school (public policy school, law school, rando other grad school, etc.), and take ALL of the standardized tests (LSAT, GRE, etc.). Some of them even apply to ALL of the consulting firms, because hey, consulting firms like policy people, right? (They do, btw.) This process is a headache for the overcommitters and their friends who have to console them as they get rejected/accepted from various things. Sometimes the unsure overcommitters stretch themselves way too thin and get nothing. By throwing their hat into everything, they lose out on the “successful people things” that they would have gotten if they had been more focused in their efforts.
Overcommitting exists in real life too
I think it’s worth pointing out that the phenomenon of chronic overcommitting occurs in life after university as well. This happens for many of the reasons I’ve detailed above, especially among people who are working in a professional capacity. I’ll give you some examples of things that such people do: they “start” a startup or a fund while working a fulltime job; they sit on the boards of many different startup companies; they volunteer with a bagillion nonprofits; they “mentor” other young professionals even though they don’t make time to spend with their families; they spin a million different projects at the same time as they fight for promotion at their company.
People *still* want to put shit on their “resume” in the real world, even things that they aren’t all that involved in.
You know what happens to these people? They:
a) burn out
b) miss out on life because they’re too busy bullshitting and spreading themselves thin, or
c) both
Not everyone believes me when I say that, but truly, this happens. It happens at Rice too, but the big difference is that people at Rice have the safety net of the university world to catch them if they fail in some capacity — most of the time, they don’t have to keep working jobs and supporting their family. (Once again, there are exceptions, and if you are one, you shouldn’t still be reading.)
So, what’s the solution?
Stop going for success and start finding your calling.
And finding your calling will lead to real, authentic success.
How do you find your calling?
That’s a big question, but it definitely starts with self-awareness. Why? Well, for one, figuring out who the fuck you are can help you decide what goals you should be setting, how you should be spending your time, and what you should be trying out in your journey. Everyone was put on this earth with inborn talents, and I believe everyone has a purpose (calling) tied to those talents. That’s why if you figure out your calling, you’ll succeed beyond any and all expectations of yourself.
Cultivate self-awareness. Reflect — and reflect often — about what you like, what you’re REALLY good it, and (if you want to get really fancy) what your values are. If you’re in college, you’ve had at least 18 years of life on this earth, so you should have some pretty solid data points regarding what you’re good at and what you enjoy — at least right now. You have to engage in self-awareness and reflection often because these aspects of your character will likely change over the course of your life, so the quicker you get into the habit of self-awareness, the better off you’ll be in the long run, and the less likely you are to have some kind of quarter-life or mid-life crisis when you don’t have the safety net of a university life to save you.
How should you reflect? Some people like to reflect by externally processing and talking aloud to close friends or family. Others like to journal on paper or in internet blogs/diaries (I highly recommend 750words.com). Some people meditate — for as loud of a person as I am, I actually like meditating, but I don’t expect everyone to do this even though I think everyone can benefit from it. Still others simply like to sit on their butts and think about their days and lives.
This type of self-reflective space in life is CRUCIAL to cultivating self-awareness — yet another reason why you can’t overcommit and screw yourself out of this very important habit. Self-reflection will help you think deep thoughts and decide what sorts of things are actually worth your time. Talking with friends and loved ones will also assist in figuring out what you should be doing with your time. Making time to strategically think about what to do with your time will automatically prevent you from overcommitting — because you’ve committed to thinking about what you’re committing to. (Meta.)
If you’re not sure about a career, job, fellowship, internship, or any other way of spending your time in the near to distant future, then go out of your way to find people who have had such experiences and talk to them. Does what they say excite you? Or does it bore you? Intrigue you? Mystify you? Talk to people, try things out (see above), and think about your experiences. Fight for your calling, and be willing to change your “plans.” I’m just a college senior, so I won’t pretend to know from experience how that thinking translates to long term careers other than what others have told me. So here are two great articles about career paths written by Victor Cheng:
It isn’t easy to figure out what those few things are that you love, but if you fight for it, you will.
And when you find those FEW THINGS that you love, those activities that you’re definitely passionate about, the things that are worth quitting everything else for, here is a list of 50 ways to say no to everything else you made the mistake of committing to or will likely get roped into doing (because once you’re getting really, really good at something, people just start asking you to do shit).
Say no purposefully. Say no so that when you say “yes”, it actually means something — not just a diluted promise. Say no so that when you say “yes,” you’re actually committing, not overcommitting.
Overcommitting dilutes efforts and forfeits power. Don’t sell yourself short.
