Being an Overachiever with a Million Interests is Exhausting

How do you excel without predefined guidelines?

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I think I may have read somewhere that failure only bothers us when we think someone else is there, bearing witness to all our failures.

I don’t know if this is exactly what I read, because, like you, I am bombarded with too many things to read in a day. Emails, ads, notes, feeds, people shouting into the internet void, people writing critically as a job, people writing uncritically as a pastime. You get the picture. I get side-tracked easily (like right now), so what I remember is questionable at best.

Still, this idea gave me something to think about.

If no one were watching, and the judgment were off the table, would I still run from failure like the plague?

I don’t know. Would you?

While travelling on the coast of Portugal this weekend, I put the entire premise of my newsletter into question. All because of a restaurant menu.

The restaurant menu

After glancing at the inexhaustible range of options for just over a second, I kept walking, confident that this restaurant wouldn’t be any good.

My rash judgment quickly took me aback, and I retreated to the menu —not because I changed my mind and wanted to eat there, but because I had to take a picture of this moment of realization.

If a restaurant is offering too many options, with absolutely no niche in sight, it’s bound to either be entirely shit, or at least, only successful in one or two cuisines that it serves.

And the “success” is bound to be mediocre at best.

I’m generally a glass-half-full kind of gal, but this is a sad reality I have come to experience in my life.

I am prepared to be wrong about it, but you tell me…

Anyway—this all made me reassess the whole “doing everything” thing. More importantly, it made me think about the actual aim of doing everything, and about doing things well, versus doing things just for fun.

I will return to my title here: Being an overachiever with a million interests is exhausting.

See, doing everything is not a bad thing. It takes trying many things to understand what you enjoy, what you’re good at, and what serves the purpose you want to pursue. The answer is also often in motion, ever-adapting and more than one thing.

So the doing everything isn’t the issue per se…

The issue is wanting to excel at all those everythings that you dabble in.

The issue is in thinking the line to excellence is as linear as it was in school.

School is basically a theme park for overachievers. Manageable goals, clear criteria, and a time frame. Everything you need to learn new skills and go above and beyond the requirements.

And while the grades were nice, the real rush when I was in school came from outdoing myself. It was never about meeting expectations—it was about exceeding them. Beating the version of myself from two weeks ago. Doing not just one thing well, but everything, from clubs and committees, sport, creative expression, and even, volunteer work.

Looking back, I know that version of me wasn’t trying to impress anyone else. At least not directly. She was just trying to hold onto a sense of momentum, because what happens when there’s nothing to race toward?

That’s when things start to wobble. Not when you burn out, necessarily. But when you graduate from the neat structure of “do this, get that,” and you’re suddenly left with nothing but a blank page and your own made-up criteria.

What do you aim for when there’s no rubric? When you design your own path, and the criteria to evaluate it.

That’s the spiral no one warns you about.

Maybe you’re in this spiral too, and if so, let me know which of the following resonates with you.

1. You are goal-oriented, but suddenly goal-less

Given a set of rules or criteria, you know you can provide results. It’s like child's play to you. Or like a formula to a mathematician. You just plug it in, and the product is guaranteed.

Of course, this changes when there are no assignments anymore. Or when no one is telling you what to do and how to ensure success. Career paths don’t look like what they used to 30 years ago. There is a less linear approach to work-life now. Instead, there is more space for exploration and experimenting. This is a privilege, but also, quite terrifying, as school doesn’t prepare us for the endless possibilities we will encounter. In fact, it doesn’t prepare us to make our own rules.

So, how can you be goal-oriented when you’re still working out what your goals are?

• Go rogue and list down all your large-scale goals — even the ones you think won’t happen.

• From those, create short-term goals to keep yourself motivated. The key is to convince yourself that you are attaining some goals.

• Sit in the discomfort of having no goals for a moment. See what comes up. Maybe a new goal that you never even thought of? Listen to that.

2. You avoid failure so much that you confuse not having a specific goal with failure

Overachievers fear failure. Failure is like a dark cloud of suspense that just hangs above them. So much so that random things that are just human appear as a failure.

Not having a specific goal is one of those perceived failures. Societal expectations don’t help, particularly in our fast-moving, over-productive world. So naturally, certain doubts may arise, like: Where am I going? How can I show my worth if I’m not achieving something? Will people think I’m slacking off or wasting time if I have no specific goal?

So, how can you avoid feeling like a failure when you’re still working out what your goals are?

• Separate the egg yolk from the egg whites. In other words, understand that figuring out what your next move is is not a sign of failure.

• Focus on how you perceive yourself in this situation, not how others might. Are you being lazy and wasting time? If the answer is no, kindly move on from this self-deprecating thought.

• Remind yourself that preparation and conscious planning take time. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

3. Your drive to over-perform is tied to your identity

This is dangerous territory. When you consistently achieve excellent results, you may start to believe that others see you as the person who always masters it all. Or worse, you may start to see yourself that way.

But what happens when the music stops? What happens when you just achieve, or when God forbid you don’t achieve at all? Your identity is complex and cannot be tied down to your achievements. It is freer than that.

So, how can you separate your identity from your need to over-perform?

• Get to know yourself. Journal, introspect, try therapy, or other self-development alternatives. Go into the depths of what it actually means to be you, and where these ideals you attach to your identity are coming from. Then learn to let them go.

• Ask friends, family, co-workers, or even teachers and bosses how they see you. Notice what comes up. Sometimes we need a bigger picture view of ourselves to help us to redefine how we see ourselves.

4. You don’t just want to excel in one thing, you want to excel in whatever you try

I sometimes find myself in helicopter achiever mode. I just coined this term because it seemed fitting. On my first aptitude test in school, the results told me I was good at everything from maths to science to the arts. This didn’t really narrow my options or help me career-wise, but it did tickle my ego.

Exceeding the standards in any new thing you try makes you feel special. Like you’re quick to get things and aren’t locked down to one niche. And who doesn’t like feeling special? But this particular point can lead to burnout (and delusion). And it can also ruin the fun of things. So maybe, just maybe, you could consider being better at some things than others.

How can you enjoy things without feeling the burden of having to excel in all of them, you ask?

• Separate your talents/strengths from the things you’re just curious to try. Let the latter be the ones you do for pure enjoyment, without the worry of success.

• Eat a piece of humble pie. You aren’t perfect at everything, nor does anyone want you to be. It’s simply not realistic, and it’s weighing your joy down.

• In the areas where you don’t excel as much, try celebrating someone else’s excellence. Another piece of humble pie is reminding yourself that we are all connected in our wins.

5. You work against time, and often think, “I could have done this already.”

This one is particularly destructive. The worst part is, you aren’t even basing your comparison on anyone else. Everyone is figuring it out as an adult, and no one is on the same track anymore like they were in school. So really, you’re just comparing yourself to an abstract idea of where you should be on an imaginary timeline.

I could already be financially independent. I could already be making X amount of money. I could already be X far in my career. I could already be recognized for the work I’m doing, etc, etc, etc…

This internal pressure is twofold because, on the one hand, it does fuel and motivate you to push forward, but on the other, it doesn’t allow you to fully celebrate where you are. In fact, you become so focused on where you are not that you miss out on what you are building in the present.

So, how do you stop working against time and appreciate where you are?

• Every time you are tempted to tell yourself where you aren’t, begin by making a list of all of the things that you have achieved.

• Think of all of the things that you would’ve missed if you had in fact “done this already.” Maybe you would have compromised relationships, missed experiences, or even other opportunities that would’ve taken you someplace better than you imagined.

• Cut the BS and tell yourself: no, I couldn’t have, because if I could have, I would have. It’s so easy to judge our past self when our present self knows more.

6. You find that the worst kind of criticism is being perceived as incapable of managing it all

This one ties into some of the previous points, but, in a nutshell, overachievers thrive on being seen as “able to manage everything”. In fact, the more the odds are against the possibility of achievement, the more rewarding it is. Needless to say, overachievers are drawn to testing their own limits of resistance.

For that very reason, criticism is not a friend. But worst of all, appearing as incapable of handling their many standards of excellence is an enemy. Criticism can sometimes be perceived as constructive, or even push an overachiever to “prove them wrong.” But being seen as incapable is debilitating. It’s like they aren’t being seen.

So, how do you withstand the criticism of being perceived as incapable?

• Remind yourself that you are capable of not always being able to manage it all. Semantics is key.

• Consider what you know that others don’t. What are you managing internally as well as externally? Is it not a lot already?

• Consider if it’s really other people who are perceiving you as incapable, or if it’s just you. If it’s other people, ask yourself, are they capable of managing it all? And if it’s just you, cut yourself some slack.

At the end of the day, resisting the urge to overachieve is a battle against yourself. Even if you are facing external pressures to perform, it’s the internal pressure to perform that is the most difficult to quiet down.

The silent urge to push further and to keep exceeding.

Although the world may feel more productive and fast-paced than ever, it is also more tolerant of alternative career paths than ever. This is something everyone is adjusting to. But instead of seeing it as terrifying because you don’t have control over it, see it as an opportunity to be free and to explore.

You will excel in whatever you do if you do it with an open heart and an open mind. The goals will come to you if you let them, and you will know the way if you allow yourself to listen.

Just keep swimming, and you will succeed in a better way than you imagined.