All my life, I’ve been something of an overachiever. Another part of being an overachiever is that I want to do everything all at once. This leads to a busy life and hectic schedule, and unfortunately very little free time. Television, relaxing? Who has time for that? I don’t have to be the best at everything I set my mind to, but I have to put 110 percent into everything I do—even if I’m doing 110 different things.
In attending Cleveland State, I’ve met a lot of other overachievers, and we all typically run into the same problems. Here’s just a few of them, and how to deal if you’re an overachiever.
1. You Sign Up For Too Many Things At Once
It’s the middle of the fall semester and you realize that you have no free time to meet with your advisor in their preferred hours because you’ve already signed up to do too many other things. Not only that, but you only have a maximum of 15 minutes between classes, meetings, social engagements, and God knows what else. College is a unique place with tons of opportunities literally just falling into your lap! Some of what you sign up for might even look good on your resume, which is always a plus. Though taking on too many of these opportunities can push you to your limits and make your life a living nightmare.
How to Deal: Before you commit to anything, find out in the simplest terms how many hours a week/month it’s going to require. Maybe the actual meeting times only take up an hour a week. But what about all of the work that goes into it—like making flyers, planning meetings, or anything else this new commitment might require? Once you find out that information put it down on paper with all of your other commitments. Even if it’s some pathetically low number, like three hours a week, still put it down on paper. You only have so many hours in a week, and some commitments need more times at different periods than others. But mainly, learning when to say no is going to be your best bet. College is a wonderful place filled with lots of opportunities! More will come your way, so don’t be afraid to turn down one.
2. You Spend More Time Thinking About Logistics Than Actually Doing Things
You have so much to do that you’d be lost without your planner and a daily to-do list. If it’s not planned down to the hour, you have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing at whatever time of the day. We also have game plans as to how we’re going to tackle every project and task that comes our way. This is only fair—we overachievers have to have a way to cope and deal with it all! However, at a certain point, you spend too much planning and not enough doing. Or even worse, you re-plan your whole day every time one thing or so doesn’t go according to plan. At a certain point, it becomes a waste of valuable time and we end up regretting it later.
How to Deal: The best advice that I have for you is to stop micromanaging and give yourself allowances. Not everything is going to go according to plan all the time. When you’re writing that daily to-do list, don’t put everything you ever have to do on there. Prioritize. Have a small amount that needs to get done today, things that would be nice if they got done today, and things that don’t have to get done today. Keep your expectations for yourself low, and plan to overshoot them every time. That way when you do have off days where you don’t get a lot done, you don’t beat yourself up for it.
3. You Put Off Doing Something If You Don’t Think It’ll Come Out Right
Part of being an overachiever means that you want to go above and beyond in everything you do. But when you have so much on your plate (which most college students do), you don’t have the time to make everything come out picture perfect the way you want it to. Even when it’s something as simple as an English paper for school, you’ll put it off until the last possible minute. Why? Obviously it’s not going to be our best work if we put it off that long. The thing of it is, overachievers want to churn out our best work for everything we do—even tedious English papers. So we wait until we have enough time to make it just perfect. Then before we know it, we’re out of time and have no time to make it perfect. It’s a vicious, endless cycle.
How to Deal: The key is time management. Break up big projects into smaller projects, and work on the smaller projects whenever you can. If you have a free period in between when you have to go to work from school, then take it and utilize it to its full potential. Even if you don’t have the time, try and make the time. If you start working on an assignment in little bits and pieces from the moment it’s assigned, you’ll be finished in no time. You might even have enough time to edit and make it perfect. The same can be said about studying for important exams.
4. If It Doesn’t Meet Your Standards Of “Perfect” Then You’re Disappointed
Not everything can come out perfect, no matter how hard we try. This reality is one that we as overachievers never fully grasp. If we’re not putting in our best and getting the same results, then who are we? Every time a failure or disappointment comes our way, we feel like it’s a major mark against us as a person. This failure can be a literal failure, or a failure to meet our own expectations. Sometimes we have to knowingly turn in work that we know isn’t our best, for various reasons beyond our control. Other times, we put our best foot forward and we still don’t meet our own desired results. But either way, it’s inevitable because no one—no matter how hard they try—can be perfect.
How to Deal: First off, ask yourself if this “failure” is worth being upset about. How close did you come to your original goal? Is this “failure” really a failure, or just a failure to meet your expectations? It doesn’t make it sting any less, but just defining this is a good way to ward off any break downs. (There’s no reason to cry over an 85 percent if it doesn’t have any real impact on your final GPA, for example.) Then ask yourself why you failed to meet your expectations, and what you can do better next time. If you didn’t do your best, then what kept you from doing your best? But most importantly, take a deep breath and calm down. Just because you failed to meet your expectations doesn’t mean you as a person are a failure.
5. You Downplay Your Accomplishments
With that being said, us overachievers are overachievers for a reason—we have set a goal for ourselves based on our past performance. But since these high expectations for ourselves lead to disappointment (or worse, other people having high expectations for us) we tend to downplay the things we have accomplished. If we’re a music student going to school on a full scholarship based on our musical talents, we downplay that. If we’re a film student or an artist with more than our fair share of experience under our belt, we’ll downplay it because we’re afraid of the letdown that might come from not meeting our expectations in the future.
How to Deal: If you’ve gotten into a mindset where you constantly downplay yourself and your accomplishments, then it’s hard to get out of that. The best thing you can do is start being proud when you do well—at anything. And stop beating yourself up when you don’t meet your expectation of perfect. Make sure that you have a support system in place (whether it be your friends, family, or even your advisors) that will not only pride you on your accomplishments, but help remind you of these when something does go awry. In the end, you’re always going to be an overachiever—and that in itself is something to be proud of!
