The Bold | Running Past the Race
If achievement is so good, why do we have the term “Over-Achiever”?
Imagine a stadium with a track. Lined up on the clay oval are a field of olympic level athletes, stretching and shifting with pent up energy. They line up, feet on the block, coiled with focus and ready to spring forward.
The they’re off, feet flying as they jockey, leaning into the curve of the track and pushing for the finish line.
Finally, one crosses the finish, followed quickly by the other two lead contenders and then the pack behind. No one slows until they are past the finish line—anticipating the finish wastes the lead.
The winner, however, does’t let up. They run on, curling around the track until they’ve passed the finish line a second time. The fans in the stands grwo quiet with shock. What are they doing?
At last, the winner collapses into the grass, heaving with exhaustion. Later, after the medal ceremony, a reporter corners the winner and asks the question that was in everyone’s mind.
Why did they keep running when they’d already won?
Brow creased with confusion, they reflected for a moment and said, “I wanted to make sure that I’d gone far enough and that I’d fully won.”
A silly story to illustrate over-achievement. There is an implication that it is a virtue to breeze past enough and keep delivering.
When we don’t clearly define what enough looks like and then stop when we reach it, we waste energy, lose opportunities, and squander resources.
The Whisper | Embracing Enough
It is tempting to go way past enough so you know that you have achieved it without having to determine what enough is. It creates the illusion of accomplishment because it accomplishes massively, but not strategically.
Knowing how to define and achieve enough is a skill that requires attention, skill, and artful imagination. It also requires us to challenge what we’ve been taught, how we’ve been rewarded, and what has been implied in school, work, and life.
Why, then, do we do over deliver?
The Over Achiever Identity
Many of us have been rewarded for our massive output by people who appear to be impressed by our effort, fortitude, commitment, and productivity. This praise weaves itself into our identity. We learn that when we over deliver, we receive approval and accolades.
This dynamic urges us to demonstrate our value and our commitment by going above and beyond the specs of a project. Every time. Even when it doesn’t make sense to do so and even when more becomes a burden not an advantage.
Figure It Out Later
It can be a difficult, frustrating process to determine the terms of satisfaction for a project. If we define the outcome too closely, we lose the ability to learn, adjust, and improve as we execute on our plan. If we choose to be guided by a vague sense of I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it we can drift and lose momentum. The terms of satisfaction, though, tell us when we are done and tell us if we’ve done well.
We haven’t properly designed our mission and aksed wht done will look like so we don’t recognize it when we see it.
Developing the precise terms that will signal enough requires thought, imagination, and planning.
Enough as Laziness, Less Than, and Compromise
We have an uneasy relationship with the idea of enough–it can feel like less and like compromise.
As children, we may have only heard “enough” when we were seeking more — cookies, candy, gaming time. It implied that we were being greedy and seeking more than we should. Enough, in that context, delivers a hit of shame and a defeated sense of compromising on what we want.
Or perhaps we’re haunted by the phrase “good enough”, which implies that there is more and that more would be better but that we can just settle for this.
What is Enough, Then?
A powerful place that gently saves energy and delivers precise, needed outcomes
Every time I’ve done a watercolor painting, there is this amazing moment of despair where I’m convinced I messed it up. Then I add one more line, a few more splashes and it becomes beautiful. If I go beyond the second moment, I run the risk of muddying the pigments and pilling the paper.
A superpower–knowing that you have solved a problem and delivered what is needed
A leader who recognized, celebrates, and insists on enough grows a reputation for delivering well without sacrificing their people or blowing their budget.
A signal of confidence, peace, and trust–eliminating the worry and uncertainty of not knowing where the finish line is, and over-delivering while driving your team crazy.
We earn that peace by investing up front in planning and awareness that makes it possible to land on enough.
A felt sense, not necessarily just a checked off to-do list
To do lists are great but if they list tasks that feed over-achievment not precise delivery, they are a dangerous reinforcement of producing over solving. Over-acheivement is performance. Enough is delivery.
A boundary that prevents limitation
The best boundaries define parameters and deliver clarity. A lack of boundaries can either paralyze us with limitless possiblity or drain away our vitality and resources.
A moving target that responds to priorities, seasons, and circumstances (which is why some of us don’t like it–sometimes feels like a moving goal post)
Enough is nuanced and it’s form and nature continue to evolve as we do the work.
Knowing when to declare enough requires that we dance with what we said we want, what we’ve discovered, and what has changed. It is a living thing.
Recognizing and Using Enough
How do we do this?
We design our projects to shoot for terms of satisfaction. We shed concrete, inflexible specifications that demand only one possible outcome. That leaves out the necessary room for things to be better than you could have envisioned and the need to know the actual solution before you design or build it. Terms of satisfaction describe how you’ll know you’re done, that you’ve succeeded, and that the need (or opportunity) is met.
We work on our own discomfort. Examine what you’ve learned from trusted sources — parents, teachers, bosses, heroes — that urge you to go well beyond enough. Confront your fears about not delivering excellence. Understand that your sense of doing enough and being enough are probably intertwined.
We make the daily, repeated choice to invite enough and to stop when we’ve achieved it.
We celebrate when we’ve delivered it and we make sure we feel the sense of accomplishment that accompanies it.
We change our relationship with enough from one of grudging compromise to a celebration of gentle, powerful art that it represents.
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