Workaholics anonymous

[kirian]

Hello.... my name is Kirian and I over commit.

I've been over committing for years now, and have been trapped in an endless cycle of over-work, stress and low self-esteem.

I've come here today in the hope of finding other people who are in the same boat as me and seeing what they do to break the cycle of over-commitment, in the hope of finding some

Comments

[bateleur]

I've been taking on too many projects for years, but since about 2002 or so there's been quite a bit of improvement.

The main aspect I've improved is being more aware of how much time stuff takes before I get involved. So now when someone says "Hey, would you like to do ?" I'm much more likely to recognise that I don't have time to take it on.

But I still do overcommit to some extent so I don't consider it a solved problem. The main thing I mess up these days is failure to take into account the arrival of new non-optional tasks. So I have my activity schedule all planned out for a month or two and then Bea gets invited to parties, stuff breaks around the house and needs repairing, some software I did for someone months ago wants modifying, I'm ill for a couple of days... and suddenly my schedule's completely screwed and things I appeared to have time for get pushed out.

[undyingking]

I would echo all of this. Although, unhelpfully, I don't think it was any sudden great insight that helped me become more aware and take a bit more control of things; just experience.

They do say CBT is good for that unhealthy behavioural patterns malarkey, but I've never tried it... Or hypnosis...

[kirian]

Maybe we are getting old...
Hell, if getting old is doing less stupid stuff and sticking up for myself a bit more, then maybe it aint so bad.

[floralaetifica]

I have an unfortunate combination of the tendency to overcommit and the tendency to avoid work. At the moment, I'm using stuff I got from 'The 4 Hour Work Week' to deal with both. Lots of useful stuff there (worth reading), but amongst them are

[bateleur]

Amusingly, I rate 0/5 of those as good!

[floralaetifica]

How do you guys cope with wanting to do lots of things but there not being enough hours in the day? This is a sod. I think it's really just impatience - we want to *finish* our projects, rather than to *do* them. I'm working on patience and trust to deal with this. For example, if you're feeling the need to apply to a hundred agents today, it's because you want to have your book deal *now*. And that's because a) you don't want to be at *this* stage, and think *that* stage will be much better and b) you're afraid you'll never *get* to *that* stage, and so think you can't be happy till you have got there because then the uncertainty will be removed

[floralaetifica]

Incidentally, good work on spotting the problem. That's half the battle.

[kirian]

Thanks. Now that I am actually feeling capable of doing stuff again, I find I am not happy with what my life has atrophied into.

[lathany]

I identify with this

[kirian]

Don't agree to stuff you don't want to do. I suspect you don't fall for this one very much (admittedly, I take a pretty firm line on this), but there's only 24 hours in the day - spend them, or at least the leisure parts, on stuff you want to do rather than feel obliged/emotionally blackmailed into!

In fact, I'm afraid you're wrong. I spend a lot of 'my' time doing stuff I fundamentally don't want to.

I am realising (finally) that I am not managing my life well enough at a fundamental level. Thanks for the tips, I will have a go at your apprach and see how it fits.