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Back-to-school season has a way of making everything feel like a yes. PTA? Sure. Volunteer? Okay. Take on another project at work because nobody else raised their hand? Fine. But suddenly your calendar is packed, you’re exhausted, and the things that actually matter to you are getting whatever energy is left. In this episode, I’m talking about how to recognize when you’re overcommitted, why high-achieving women are particularly vulnerable to taking on too much, and the two shifts that can help you start creating a life that feels full without constantly feeling drained by it. Because the goal isn’t an empty calendar. It’s a calendar filled with the things you actually want your life to be about.
In this episode, we unpack:
The 3 signs you’re overcommitted
Why a packed calendar isn’t necessarily the problem
The hidden cost of always being the one who says yes
How to get ruthless about what actually matters
Why a thrilling vision makes saying no so much easier
Work with me:
Join Ambitious & Balanced:
www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced
Book a Work-Life Balance Strategy Call:
www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced-call
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www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/daily-kickstart
Transcript
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.
Hello, hello, working moms. Welcome back. As we dive into our second week talking about back-to-school season and transitions, for some of you that don't have kids that are going back to school, you might have toddlers or babies. This is still going to be highly relevant to you as we just talk about overcommitment because, as everyone heads into September, lots of things begin to shift for us.
People are beginning to transition in their mind to the end of the year. You've got the end of Q3, the beginning of Q4, the holiday planning is starting. There's just simply a lot more things that you have to either say yes to or no to.
Back-to-School Overcommitment: When Everything Starts Adding Up
But when it comes to back-to-school specifically, there's even another level that comes with all of that. It's questions like, are you going to be the classroom parent? Are you going to join the PTA? Coach your kid's soccer team, volunteer in your kid's class, or maybe even we're just talking within the family unit itself, like between you and your partner. How are you going to separate household duties and commitments?
Who's in charge of school communication? School lunches, signing permission slips, buying school supplies. There's just so much that comes with the back-to-school season, where if you're not careful, you're going to find yourself burning out and feeling really exhausted by the end of the year.
That's why I am bringing to you this episode, and we're thinking through how to best set yourself up for both an ambitious life that has a lot of good commitments in it, but also a balanced life where you are not feeling exhausted all the time.
I want to be clear that I don't believe there's a hard-and-fast rule to how many commitments you can have on your calendar or how many things you can volunteer for. I have had clients that, if you took a look at their calendar, it looks booked, like minute to minute every single day, basically from the time they wake up to the time that they go to sleep. I have other clients that have a much more open calendar. If you looked at it, there's only a few commitments in there, and both of them feel burned out and exhausted.
Similarly, I have had clients that feel an immense amount of spaciousness and balance and creativity and fun in their life and have a very full calendar.
There's No Perfect Calendar for an Ambitious Working Mom
I know it would be nice if I could just hand you this manual that says, "Here's what your calendar should look like, and here's the types of commitments you should have or the number of commitments you should have at max." But, of course, that isn't the way life works.
Your circumstances are widely different than mine. Your values are different. Your priorities are different. Your goals are different, and your schedule should reflect all of that.
At the end of the day, there's really three ways that I can identify if you are overcommitted and you're saying yes to too many things, or you just have too many things that are not actually your priorities. Because there's no hard-and-fast rule, this is essentially how we can determine if something needs to shift in the way you're committing yourself and how you're calendaring yourself.
#1: Your Calendar Is Full, but You're Not Excited About Your Life
So number one, you look at your calendar and you're not very excited about what's there. Meaning most of the things that you're doing throughout your day feel more like a have to than a want to.
Okay, heck no. In an ambitious and balanced life, I want you to love your life. I want you to be overjoyed with your life and living commitments that really fill you up every day. Even having to cart your kids around to various activities or mundane school lunches or meal prep, right? There should be fun in that too.
So if you look at your calendar and you're not feeling jazzed by what you see, then we have a problem, and it's definitely a sign that you're overcommitted or committed to the wrong things.
#2: There's a Difference Between Draining Exhaustion and Lit-Up Exhaustion
Number two, I can tell you're overcommitted if you get to the end of your day and you feel absolute exhaustion, but not in a good way, right? The good way is when you have a really full day of lots of things that really light you up, and your body is just legitimately tired from all of that.
Versus exhaustion that comes from having to push yourself to do things that you don't really want to do all day, where they're not really a part of your natural value system and they drain you. Draining exhaustion versus lit-up exhaustion, that's completely different, right?
If you're consistently getting to the end of your day and experiencing that draining sense of exhaustion where you just can't wait for the weekend or your next vacation day or off day, then we've got a problem.
#3: You're Sacrificing Me Time, Rest, Family Time, or Focused Work
The last way I can tell you that you're overcommitted or focused on the wrong things is if you have dropped the me time, the rest time, your focused family time, or your uninterrupted work time in order to make room for all of the other commitments within your calendar, right?
If those are the four key priorities that I teach my clients in the Ambitious and Balanced program, we all have those four priorities. Obviously, we all have more than just four key priorities, but those are the ones that that program focuses on because I know that when you learn how to prioritize those four things, me time, rest time, family time, focused family time, and uninterrupted work time, that you are setting yourself up for a balanced life in a sustainable way.
So if those are the ones that are dropping in order to make room for other commitments, then I know, at least long term, that there's going to be a problem, and you're going to hit a burnout level or exhaustion level in the coming weeks or months.
Why High-Achieving Women Are So Vulnerable to Overcommitment
Now, here's the thing about overcommitment, right? You might hear these three sort of signs of being overcommitted and focused on the wrong things, and you're self-identifying as one, like, "Yeah, hey, that's me." So I want you to know that there is no judgment here.
Okay, one of the reasons that you're drawn to this podcast and then to me as a teacher and a coach is that you're ambitious, right? You're a high achiever. You might even describe yourself as Type A, right? You like to control things. You like to lead things. You like things done a certain way. I do too.
And so because of that, your capacity is much greater than everybody—somebody else's, not everybody's, but somebody else's, right? Somebody that maybe wouldn't describe themselves in that way, meaning that you can, in fact, take on a lot more and not be exhausted by it.
But I also know because of your personality, you have a really hard time delegating.
It's just simply easier to do it yourself than it is to teach somebody else how to do it or have to redo somebody else's mistake and work. That leads to overcommitment as well.
Or I would say this is typical of a lot of women who struggle to sit in the discomfort of nobody volunteering, right?
When Being a “Good Team Player” Leads to Overcommitment
I remember a client who sat at a leadership table with, I want to say, like eight other leaders, most of which were men, at her company, and she was describing their last team meeting to me when she came to our coaching session. And she said, she was like describing these initiatives and the high-level conversations they were having. And she found herself volunteering for like five of them, not because she wanted to do it or it was even her job to do it, but it was because nobody else was volunteering and she felt uncomfortable with the silence.
It sounds responsible, right? It sounds like you're a good team player when you raise your hand in those moments, but really, at the end of the day, all she's doing is overcommitting and stealing away time from other things that really matter to her.
Lastly, I see this when it comes to leadership because you don't want to overburden your team, right? So you take it on. You know your team is already stressed out because you're stressed out. You would rather work late several days in a row than add one more thing to their plate.
I see you. Every single person I coach fits into this sort of high-achieving, functioning stereotype, at least mostly so. But of course, there's a cost to it.
The Real Cost of Overcommitment: Your Health, Time, and Long-Term Goals
Your health really being the biggest one. Statistics show that if you work 55 hours or more in a regular work week, and I'm not just talking about like butt in chair, staring at your computer, I'm talking about the scrolling time, the time that you're on your phone answering Slack messages or checking messages, right? If you're never shutting down your work brain, and you're kind of in this constant state of work mode for 55 hours or more a week, you are 35% more likely to have a stroke. 35%. That's a lot.
It's also costing you your goals. If you are truly committed to the life that you want to create five years from now, 10 years from now, when you retire, right? Your commitments today should ladder up to that.
And I guarantee that if you are overcommitted to the wrong things, you are filling your time with things that are not going to help reach your long-term goals. There's so many things I could talk about around the cost of being overcommitted.
Overcommitment Is Costing You the Best Version of Yourself
But the last one I want to mention to you is the cost of being your best self. When you are overcommitted, you are literally showing up subpar, worn out, not thinking straight, not prioritizing correctly. Boundaries becoming infinitely harder when you are overcommitted.
And if we bring back to school back into this conversation, a lot of what happens in the season of being overcommitted, in this sort of transition time, is that our kids get a subpar version of us as a mom, right? Literally, the people that matter the most in your life don't get the best time and energy or emotional space from you when you're overcommitted.
I can't tell you how many people come to me on a breakthrough call or a break free from stress call or a work-life balance strategy call. Those are all the calls that I take with women that are curious and interested in potentially coaching with me. And we talk a lot about where they're at and their challenges and their vision on all of those calls.
I cannot tell you how many people come to me and they say the biggest thing that is weighing on them is that they feel like they're not showing up as a great mom. They're getting to the end of their day, and even though it was a full day of work and mommying, they don't feel successful, right? There's kind of this low hum of failure all across life.
It doesn't have to be that way. And learning how to not be overcommitted is one of the steps to get there.
How to Break the Cycle of Overcommitment Without Quitting Your Job
So what can you do about it? How do you get out of this cycle of overcommitment? It reminds me of one of my clients, Chelsea, many years ago. She came to me overcommitted, exhausted, feeling like she was failing at everything, thinking maybe the only thing she could do to really fix her overcommitment was quit her job, right? That was the solution, which is very typical for women when they come to me on those calls.
They think that the only way out of this is quit or go part time, like pull back in your career. That's not uncommon.
But I remember as we started coaching together, we looked at her calendar together, and I started asking her questions about various commitments. And she was able to identify a handful of things that she said she could let go of, even though it would be really uncomfortable and hard in her people-pleasing self.
And I remember one of them was she was a board member. I don't remember for what type of organization. But the commitment was literally only one time a month for an evening, a couple of hours. But it really wasn't just that.
It was that it took up space in her calendar. It took a mental thought in her calendar. It took up emotional space because she didn't really want to be going to those meetings.
What Would You Do If You Had That Time Back?
And I remember when we were talking about letting go of that commitment and doing the uncomfortable thing and telling them, "Hey, I'm going to have to bow out of this commitment and drop off of the board, even though I know it's really hard for you to find board members and all of the things," right?
I remember I asked her, "What would you do with that time if you had it back?" And we're not just talking about the couple of hours for the meeting. We're also talking about the prep time and the thinking time and the emotional space.
And she started to think about it. She said, "I'd probably take that time for myself. I'd probably go get a massage or hang out with a friend or do something that was really going to fill me up."
And I said, "Well, which one would you really like to do?" And it was no question. She wanted the me time. She needed the me time. It was what was going to make her show up as a better version of her.
Get Crystal Clear on the Life You Actually Want
Or I also think about another client, Cheryl. For her, it wasn't even that I worked with her through her calendar of commitments. Instead, what I helped her do is get crystal clear on her goals and her vision for her current life and her life in a few years. Who did she really want to be? What did she really want to achieve?
When that became clear, the next logical question for her to answer was, what was she going to need to lean into to make it happen? And what was she going to have to let go of? And the commitments of what she needed to let go of that needed to, like, fall off of her calendar just happened naturally.
So as I answer this question for you, what can you do? Two things, just like my clients. Number one, get ruthless with your priorities. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to feel good to tell someone no or to break a commitment that you probably shouldn't have made in the first place, right?
Doesn't feel good to ease up on an expectation or let someone fail, all of which will likely be results when you ruthlessly prioritize. But if the things in your calendar don't ladder up to that bigger vision, they also got to go, which is number two.
Be Ruthless With Your Priorities and Energized by Your Vision
Not only do you need to be ruthless, you need to be energized by your vision. You need to be thrilled by what you are going after in your life and what you are looking to achieve, right? That should be naturally motivating.
Both of these things are a lot of the work that I do with my clients in the Ambitious and Balanced cohort and with my clients one-on-one, because it's foundational to an ambitious, balanced life.
And if you want to stop being a yes person that takes on too much and is feeling exhausted every day at the end of the day, not a good exhaustion, but a bad one, feeling like your kids are never really getting the best of you, this is the fastest way. Be ruthless with your prioritization and have a really thrilling, strong vision of what you're moving towards.
I'm not going to say it's easy, but it's the fastest way.
If you want some support talking through either one of those things, what your priorities should be, the four key priorities, helping you set a vision and goals for where you're headed and building some to a really thrilling life, your next step is to book a work-life balance strategy call.
That's where you and I are just going to talk one-on-one about your life, where you're at, what you want, and figure out exactly the path you need to take in order to achieve all of your goals, not just today, but in the future as well.
Working moms, it is such a pleasure to be with you this week. Next week, we'll have one more topic on going back to school to round out the series. And until then, let's get to it.
Start Your Day with More Calm, Focus, and Confidence
If you wake up most days spinning with a hundred different priorities vying for your attention, then the Daily Kickstart is exactly what you need.
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It's designed to help shift you out of overwhelm and into calm, confident action before the chaos hits.
This daily practice is the same tool I offer to all my clients, and it's going to show you exactly how to lead your day instead of react to it. It takes just 10 minutes a day, and the impact will ripple through everything, your mood, your energy, your presence with your kids, and how you lead at work.
My clients indicate time and time again that this tool was the one that made the biggest difference for them. And I'm offering it to you totally free.
You can download it by going to www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/daily-kickstart. And of course, I'll have that for you in the show notes as well. All right, working moms, let's get to it.
