Overwhelm and Purpose
Last week, I wrote about the intersection of overwhelm and agency, arguing that we all have the ability to choose the tradeoffs we make. That’s at the micro level (e.g., responding to a request at work that has an unrealistic deadline), but I think it also applies to our macro choices about pursuing purpose.
Two examples:
Costs v. Investments
Recently, my friend Michael sent me this article from The New Yorker. In the article, Cal Newport (also the author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, among others) profiles several professionals who were prompted by the pandemic to do “career downsizing, voluntarily reducing their work hours to emphasize other aspects of life.”
When I hear their logic, it sounds like a reallocation of their energy and emotion investment portfolio—less work, more of everything else—to get a better return.
When this topic comes up with clients, I usually ask them, “How might you maximize your Emotional ROI?”
That framing came from an observation that of those people I’ve coached who were experiencing overwhelm at work or work-life balance challenges were, on average, less likely to see purpose in their work. That is, they didn’t see an emotional payoff to their efforts. As such, the costs of their success were just that—costs.
However, when there’s a clear sense of purpose—emotionally felt—these costs were experienced instead as investments.
Put another way, a clear purpose converts the costs into investments.
Defining “Enough”
In Newport’s article, he uses Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” to articulate what it looks like to have a clear sense of how much material consumption is enough.
Newport writes: “Thoreau’s goal was to calculate the specific cost of eliminating deprivation from his life. He wanted to establish a hard accounting of how much money was required, at a minimum, to achieve reasonable shelter, warmth, and food. This was the cost of survival. Work beyond this point was voluntary.”
Totally.
My hunch is that when one doesn’t have a clear enough definition of purpose or of what is “enough,” it’s easy to live in a state of permanent overworking.
It’s like eating dinner without knowing the limits of your appetite. It’s really easy to overeat!
Of course, it’s even harder to have a clear sense of enough when we live in a society that values material consumption and has numerous avenues to compare ourselves against others. As Newport writes, “It’s hard to account for the cost of voluntary work if you’re tangled in a cultural context where everyone is getting and spending.”
But when we don’t clarify our objectives, we can more easily lock ourselves into a state that requires the overwhelm. A few years ago, I surveyed my network of working parents on their strategies for achieving a reasonable work-life balance.
One friend said this: “I see a big part of the problem as financial over-commitments, which then require working long hours to sustain. Under financial pressure, a family’s dynamic shifts to encourage the spouse with the higher earning potential to prioritize work.”
If either of those feel relevant to you, some steps that might be useful
1. Clarify your purpose.
Designing Your Life suggests writing a “Workview” and “Lifeview,” which are short statements (~250 words) that capture what you're trying to get out of work and life.
2. Connect to that purpose regularly.
It can be easy to lose sense of purpose in the daily swarm of to-dos. Creating a routine (e.g., daily or weekly affirmations) that directly connects us to our purpose can keep us closer to it. When we’re being asked to stay late at work, an emotional cost, it’s helpful to know what emotional payoff we’re after.
3. Reallocate for emotional ROI.
The most simple version of this is to look back at your last few weeks and ask: “What activities, with what people, gave me the most energy? (Or substitute energy for meaning, fulfillment, engagement, or joy—whatever feels right for you.) Which activities took the most energy away?
With those insights, strategize ways to do more of the former and less of the latter.