For the Chronic Overcommitter: How to Break the Cycle

Left unsupervised, I’m a zealous joiner. Every project, every committee, every study group, and every volunteer role sounds like the perfect opportunity for me to get involved and make a contribution. When I hear about a new possibility or project, my immediate reaction is to raise my hand or make a beeline for the sign-up link.

I remember the first year both of my girls were in school all day. After seven years in the trenches with babies, toddlers, and then preschoolers, what in the world was I going to do with all of this extra time? The possibilities seemed endless! What I did was sign up for far too many things; room mom for both of the girls’ classes, new responsibilities at church, and the beginnings of several projects at home. It quickly became apparent that I had overcommitted. I had overreached my personal capacity for juggling, and the balls were hitting the floor all around me.

Truth be told, I have a limited attention span. I also have limited resources in terms of time and energy. Much to my frustration, I can only be in one place at a time. I require regular food, exercise, and sleep in order to keep my motor running, and possibly even more importantly, to be nice to the people with whom I live. As much as I would like to have superhero multi-tasking abilities, I am only human.

Many of us find ourselves buying into some kind of Wonder Woman complex. Too many of us are frazzled and stressed out by the abundance of responsibilities we are attempting to manage well, while simultaneously feeling like failures because we can’t seem to keep up with how fast our world is moving.

Thanks to the hard work of the generations of women who have come before us, women today can choose to have a family and also to pursue our passions outside the home. While I am grateful for those hard-won options, I think the pressure to have it all contributes to the sense of failure many of us feel when we can’t figure out how to balance everything we feel we ought to be doing. Raising little people, nurturing a marriage, building a rewarding career, pursuing our passions, and serving our community, school, or church all take time and energy. Because our resources are limited, we have difficult choices to make.

Perhaps I can have the job I love and spend quality time with my kids, but I might have to turn down requests to volunteer right now. I can serve as a Sunday school teacher, but may have to forgo being a team mom. In order to say yes to regular date nights with my husband, I might have to pass on playing softball. Life-giving time with my girlfriends might mean leaving the bed unmade. A yes to helping out the drama boosters means a no to being a PTA officer. I can make time to say yes to writing a blog post most weeks, but for now, I need to say no to writing a book.

In my experience, every yes requires at least one no.

My daughters are now twenty and twenty-two, living elsewhere most of the year. The demands on my time are different than when they were home. When my youngest daughter left for college and my empty nest season began, I almost fell prey to the same mistake I made years ago as I considered how to spend this gift of more time. So many possibilities! After a gentle nudge from God and a slightly less gentle reminder from my husband, I took a deep breath and slowed down to consider what I had learned with the passing of all these years.

This time, I am making different choices:

• Instead of jumping at every shiny opportunity that piques my interest, I am learning to take the time to prayerfully consider each yes and how it fits in with the goals I have set and the things I say are important. Seldom do I need to commit or say yes right away.
• I am choosing to go deeper and invest more of myself in the work and people to which I am committed, instead of simply making more commitments. Good work on two or three projects is better than mediocre involvement in eight or ten.
• I am learning to recalibrate and change course if something isn’t working and figure out when I need to change my yes to a no. I am choosing to quit those drains on my time that no longer fit in with my goals and values. Just because something was right for a season doesn’t mean it is mine forever.

As we are reminded in Ecclesiastes 3, to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. With God’s help, I am learning to slow down and listen before I choose my best yes.

Kelly Johnson is a counselor, writer, speaker, and advocate. She leads a weekly Bible study and serves as chair of the board of directors at a local shelter for the homeless. Married to her high school sweetheart, she is the mom of two college-age daughters. Kelly writes about life, faith, and her newly empty nest at kellyjohnsongracenotes.com.