The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 192 - More Than You Can Chew

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: I have run into an issue with a good handful of my clients over and over again in the last couple of weeks, and I feel like when I'm running into the same issue over and over again, that's an episode, my friend.

Pete: That means it's time to record a podcast.

Jen: And what's coming up is, I have clients reaching out to me and saying, "Oh my gosh, Jen, I've just realized I've bitten off more than I can chew."

Pete: Biting off more than you can chew, okay. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay, now, this has been showing up in different ways. In some cases, it has been that a client takes on way too many projects at one time, and then is like, "Holy cow, there is no way I can execute everything I've said yes to." So, that's one version. Another version is someone booking every free second of time in their calendar, and then realizing that there's just literally no seconds left in the day, and they're exhausted and overwhelmed and burned out. So, that's a version. So another has to do with not necessarily responsibilities that anyone else is counting on you for, so it's not like scheduling and it's not like saying yes to too many projects, but like the level of creative output someone expects from themself, they've set their expectations way too high. And then when they go after the thing, they realize they're sort of like drowning in their expectations. And many other examples, but those are kind of like the three that are immediately coming to mind. And I realize we've talked on this podcast before about practically how to sort of like whittle down the to-do list, but I think I'm more interested in dealing with like the feelings surrounding having too much to do and then what one might do with that in order to deflate that tension a bit.

Pete: Yeah. Have you ever had the experience of putting too much peanut butter in your mouth at any one time?

Jen: Yes. And I know, for people, that should be not so enjoyable, but I just love peanut butter.

Pete: Oh, I'm obsessed with peanut butter. But there's a tipping point with peanut butter, which I would say is when you can't chew, where you feel like you're about to die because you because you can't swallow the amount of peanut butter that is in your mouth at one time. So, I'm like...that is my metaphor for how I'm thinking about this, that feeling of like, "Oh my god, I've gone too far. This is the end." And I'm being obviously hyperbolic, but I've had that moment. I remember I was standing in the kitchen and being, with a spoon of peanut butter in my mouth, like, "Oh, this is it. This is where it ends. This is it."

Jen: Oh my god, this is reminding me so much of when I was the mother of a smaller child, my daughter would shove so much in her mouth that she would end up like leaning over her plate, opening her mouth, and just dropping the food back onto the plate because there wasn't any room.

Pete: Oh my god, gross.

Jen: And I know, it's gross. But I'm kind of thinking that this is what some of my clients need to do, is lean over the plate and let some of the food drop.

Pete: Right. Right. Right, right, right. I share that metaphor of peanut butter A., to get a laugh, but B., also because I think the same logic applies to what you shared in terms of your client examples, which is we either underestimate what a project is going to do to us, or maybe we overestimate our capacity. I don't know, maybe they are two sides of the same coin, underestimating what might be coming at us and then overestimating our ability to respond to it. So, they were the things I wrote down. And then you mentioned like expectations versus reality, and I actually wonder if all of the times that we bite off more than we can chew are a product of our expectations being very different to the reality of the thing that we actually have to do. So, there are my initial thoughts.

Jen: Well, you know, it's so funny you say that because...so one of my clients reached out and said, "I really feel like I bit off more than I could chew. I'm balancing too many things. I wonder what it would look like for me to take this off my plate right now and then put it back on my plate in a couple of months." And my response was, "What makes you think you'll have less to juggle in a couple months? Like, maybe we need to figure out how to eliminate something and not put it back on the plate. Like, maybe we need to look at how the spaces are designed, and how the priorities are designed." So the expectation that you would suddenly have all of this extra bandwidth just because it's a couple months later, might not be the reality.

Pete: So true. So true. Okay. And you mentioned feelings earlier, like you want to unpack a little bit of the like, the feeling of biting off more than you can chew. And I wonder if there's a discomfort we have with saying no, that might be playing a big part here. Like, I feel uncomfortable saying no to the latest project that someone just offered me, and so I say yes. And I do that enough times that eventually, I realize, "Uh-oh, I've bitten off more than I can chew." And so, to your point just now, postponing that by a month isn't necessarily solving the problem of the fact that what's actually happening is we're incredibly uncomfortable. And probably behind that is a bunch of fear with letting someone down, with saying no, with rejecting an offer because it might be the last offer we ever get. Like, there's a scarcity or fear of saying no, here. That's what I'm thinking about, the feelings. Does that make sense?

Jen: Yes. Well, funny you should say that because I had written "FODO" and "FODM", Fear Of Disappointing Others and Fear Of Disappointing Myself, which I think is very much at the root of why we bite off so much in the first place. That, I don't want to disappoint someone else. I'm so afraid to say no, so I say yes, even though the little voice inside is like, "Do you really have space for this?" (I don't know what character that was.) And then the fear of disappointing myself, I want to prove to myself that I can handle everything, and that I can take on that huge project, and I can raise the bar that high with my creative output. I'm afraid to disappoint myself.

Pete: Wow. I feel like this is the moment where people listening to this podcast are going to pause it and go, "I just feel called out." Like that's how I feel, like just pausing this conversation and being like, "Wait. FODO, fear of disappointing others, that is like, I think that's at the core of a lot of my struggles with these kinds of things. Yeah, personal.

Jen: Mine too, P.S. That's why it was easy for me to name it.

Pete: FODO, alright. Fear of disappointing others, yeah.

Jen: Yeah. And I think it ties into something you talk about a lot, which is imposter syndrome, that the fear of disappointing others and disappointing myself is linked in some way to impostor syndrome. That, "If someone offers me an opportunity and I say no, what are they going to think of me? That I can't do it? Or that I don't know how to manage myself enough? I don't want to be found out as a 'fraud'." So, I say yes. Or I'm sure that works in the reverse too, that I say yes to something, I realize it's not a good idea to move forward for whatever reason, but now this fear of disappointing that person is also part of my fear of being a fraud or a failure.

Pete: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's like, "Who am I to say no," is where I would go. Like, "Who do I think I am?"

Jen: Right. That was a much more succinct way to say what I was trying to say. Thank you for that assist.

Pete: You helped me get there, you helped me get there. This is the podcast. So yeah, I think I would go to, "Who am I to say no?" And then you could, if it was me, I would spiral into, "That's me. I'm being ungrateful. I should just be so happy that someone would think of me, to bring this project to me." And just because, you know, maybe it's a project I would have said yes to two years ago so I know how to do it, so of course I should say yes. Versus what I actually know deep down, which is like, "Oh, I've grown beyond these kinds of projects. I'm actually looking to do this, this, and this instead. But I would definitely find myself saying, "Well, who are you to say no, in this moment?"

Jen: You know what's really interesting? In some of these cases, the thing the person has taken on and why they're reaching out to me has something directly to do with me, that it's something we were meant to do together, some sort of creative project, maybe it's a class, maybe it's a coaching, whatever. And they're reaching out to me with that fear that, "Jen is going to be so disappointed when I tell her I've bitten off more than I can chew so I have to figure out a way to take this off my plate." And in zero of these circumstances...now, I'm sure this is not true across the board. But for me, in zero of these circumstances, have I thought to myself, "Wow, I am so personally injured by this person taking on too much."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: In fact, quite the opposite. And again, this might just be specific to my personality. I'm like, "How can I help you figure out how to eliminate something, especially the thing that involves me? Let's like figure out how to remove it from the equation so that, you know, I'm not contributing to you feeling overwhelmed."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So you know, that worst case scenario, I haven't seen it come true yet.

Pete: Totally. Yeah, I feel like we overinflate. It's almost like we overrate the impact that our decision is going to have on others, when, in actual fact, people might be relieved because they too have bitten off more than they can chew. So like, you might actually be doing them a favor by saying, "I've bitten off more than I can chew. I don't think I can commit to this." Or to your point, like, you might find that the person is just happy for you, proud that you are able to measure where you're at and then decide to say no to something. Like, I feel like that's a skill that, if one witnesses or observes, is a great mirror back to yourself to be like, "Huh. Now I wish I could get better at picking and choosing, or saying no, or recognizing...having the self-awareness, I guess, to recognize when I need to say no."

Jen: Yeah. I want to circle back for a second, to the client who I mentioned said, "You know, maybe I'll take this off my plate for a couple months and then put it back on," which feels a little like magical thinking.

Pete: Right.

Jen: However, there is a version of that which might look like, "Let me take this off my plate for a couple months, and spend some time and effort removing things from my plate that are making it impossible for me to do the thing that I'm doing at the level I want to do it. It's not that I'm adding it back to an already full plate in a couple of months. It's that I'm clearing out the space, clearing out the noisy stuff, so that I can actually invest the resources I want (time, energy, etc.) into the things that I want to be my priorities."

Pete: Yeah, that feels very different to just prolonging the same cycle.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like, there's a...gosh, I cannot remember for the life of me who I heard say this, but there was one of the brilliant minds and thought leaders that you hear interviewed on all these podcasts that we consume, that all mesh into one. One of them, at some point in my life, I heard say something like, "If someone asks you to do something next week and your answer is, 'Oh, no, I couldn't possibly do it. I can't possibly fathom doing that next week. I don't want to. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. But in two months time, sure,'...like if you can't imagine yourself doing it in the next two weeks, then say, 'No,' don't do it at all." Some like mental model like that, which I found super helpful. Because I've often...I mean, I feel like everyone has had this situation where you're like, "Sure, let's arrange a catch up for next July." And then next July comes around, and you're like, "Oh my god, what was I thinking?"

Jen: I heard this same thing too. I don't know if it was from the same person. I cannot remember where I heard it...so sorry, person who deserves it to be attributed to them. But the version of it that I use is, "If you wouldn't make room for it on your calendar today, you're not going to be happy about making room for it on your calendar in two months time."

Pete: Oh nice, that's good.

Jen: "Because there will be other things that are trying to crowd in on your calendar. Just because you have the free time now for two months from now, doesn't mean that other things aren't going to come up. And so if you schedule that catch up that you didn't really want to have but you felt kind of obligated to have, and you push it off for three months and now it's locked into the calendar, and then something you really want to say yes to comes up and you have to say no, boo hiss."

Pete: Yeah. Okay, I also feel like there are two other things that I feel compelled to say. One is that I feel like it's easier to have too much on your plate than to not.

Jen: Truth.

Pete: And that it's not a personal flaw, if one feels overwhelmed and has too much on their plate. Because I feel like it's the way that culture and society tends to condition us at the moment, to be like, "Do more. Have more. Hustle more. Drive more. Be more." You know? So there's like, we're constantly being fed messages of adding things to our plate, I feel like. And so, the easy thing to do is to add things to our plate. So, I just want to like normalize the fact that I feel like we all feel like this in some way.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: But then secondly, the other thing I was thinking about was, of course, a blog from Seth Godin, which I think was titled "The world's worst boss".

Jen: Yep.

Pete: I'm going to pop it in the Box O' Goodies. And the punchline of the blog is that the world's worst boss is you. As in, I am my own world's worst boss. Jen is Jen's own world's worst boss. Because of the way that we talk to ourselves internally, the way that we manage our workload like we're talking about, we just constantly add, and we don't think about the repercussions. And so often, I think it's worth thinking, "What would I advise someone else? Or like, what would I tell my best friend, if they came to me with the situation that I find myself in?" And it's often like, "What are you talking about, Jen? Just say no to like this, this, and this." Whereas you, Jen, as the world's worst boss of yourself, are unable to like distinguish between the two because of scarcity, because of FODO, because of FODM, all of the things that we've talked about.

Jen: So true. So true. You know, I want to also acknowledge something that I think is just really important and could easily be overlooked. That, in the cases of the clients who I'm mentioning on today's show, I want to send each of them my virtual high-five, because they took the first step to make things better for themselves. Which is, they reached out and asked for help in solving the problem, instead of just sitting in the overwhelm and feeling the pressure and feeling like they were letting themselves and everyone else down but doing it silently. Like, I'm sure it took quite a lot of courage to reach out and say, "I feel like I've gotten in over my head here, and I could use some help in like figuring out how to alleviate this."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: But now, because I know, I can help. Or I can, at the very least, just be a shoulder to cry on about it.

Pete: Right. Yeah. And that will continue to be helpful moving forward, because getting more comfortable with biting off an appropriate amount to chew takes some adjusting. You know, if you're used to having three or four scoop tablespoons of peanut butter at any one time, Pete, going back to just one is like, "Oh, interesting. This is an adjustment." And so in order to navigate that change, it can be helpful to have someone in your corner to continue to share, "I used to have this much on my plate. Now I've got this much on my plate. Now, I'm grappling with this." I feel like it's just a constant state of managing one's plate.

Jen: It is. You know, a couple couple Christmases ago, Pete, I sent you an engraved spoon that was specifically a peanut butter spoon. I think I even engraved on it, "Pete's Peanut Butter Spoon."

Pete: You did.

Jen: And so, I'd like to offer up to you that the spoon was only designed to hold one scoop at a time, bite off what you can chew.

Pete: And what's funny is, this spoon that you sent me (which I still use, to this day) was significantly smaller than the spoon that I was previously serving myself peanut butter on. So, thank you for helping me bite off the appropriate amount.

Jen: Wow. Well then, you're welcome, Pete, because I feel like I have already helped you to bite off exactly what you can chew.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.