You're doing too much

When overachieving is counterproductive

There’s a question that I return to over and over: What’s the right balance between effort and ease? 

How hard should I push? What’s the right level of sitting back and trusting, waiting, observing? What can I safely delegate to invisible, universal forces? Do I need to delegate anything at all, or are they getting marching orders from elsewhere? Surely I must at least stay alert and ready to run in whichever direction they point. Surely some vigilance is called for, some readiness for action.

I like the phrase, “What will be will be.” So equanimous. So liberating and calming. But then I wonder: To what extent is the truth of that statement dependent on me doing the thing that will make it so? What if I do too much or too little, and “what will be” turns out to be something else entirely, something less good? 

Point is, I’m a doer. (Also, obviously, an overthinker. Thinking is doing, as far as your nervous system is concerned.) I don’t do well with helplessness or lack of agency. I’m with Joan Baez on this: “Action is the antidote to despair.” 

Whatever you’re worried about, there’s almost always a way to do something about it. Climate change, political polarization, food insecurity, the loneliness epidemic. There are little, individual actions you can take in your own sphere of influence about all those things. And I do! It makes me feel better. 

The flip side is that when my ability to take positive, useful action is stymied, I get very uncomfortable very fast. 

My husband has gently suggested that this represents something sort of central to my karma in this lifetime, something I’m here to work out. Something about control—my need for it, my thrashing against the possibility that I have less of it than I’d like.

Rude, I know.

I stand by this orientation of mine, more or less. And yet. Lately I’ve been wondering: What if most of what we’re doing to counteract our problems is only making them worse? 

Take DEI. Publications from the Harvard Business Review to the New York Times have noted that mandatory corporate DEI programs don’t do much to improve either diversity or animosity among different identity groups, and in fact they may make them worse.

As journalist Jesse Singal writes in his NY Times op-ed: 

“That’s partly because any psychological intervention may turn out to do more harm than good. The psychologist Scott Lilienfeld made this point in an influential 2007 article in which he argued that certain interventions — including ones geared at fighting youth substance use, youth delinquency and PTSD — most likely fell into that category. In the case of DEI, Dr. Dobbin and Dr. Kalev warn that diversity training that is mandatory or that threatens dominant groups’ sense of belonging or makes them feel blamed may elicit negative backlash or exacerbate biases.”

Here’s Gallup on the state of race relations over the past ~20 years. 

We’re certainly doing more on this front now than we were in 2005. Why are things so much worse?

If you start thinking about it, the list of other pertinent examples is kind of astonishing. 

• Trust in institutions and the media is plummeting. The response has been to crack down on “misinformation” through censorship, ideologically driven programming and partisan “fact checking,” and working with tech companies to silence dissident voices, even in areas that are actively, scientifically contested (e.g. the lab leak theory or the efficacy of masks). This has, predictably, supercharged the erosion of trust. 

• The more charges and indictments are levied against Trump by liberal prosecutors, the more staunch his support becomes among conservative voters.

  

• In an effort to increase Covid vaccine uptake, the government and many schools and businesses implemented vaccine mandates and passports. Now voluntary participation in established vaccination programs is waning, with the CDC reporting the highest-ever number of exemptions for routine childhood vaccinations in 2023. 

• The more alarmist and aggressive both sides of the political divide become—calling each other members of a “death cult,” idiots, barely-human scum, etc.—the more extreme and bubbled we all grow, less and less able to rationally consider and discuss shared values and nuanced positions, since it’s seen as giving cover to the enemy. 

• The more “therapy speak,” trigger warnings, and safe spaces abound, the more fragile and less mentally healthy we become as a society.

That’s politics and culture. But the same phenomenon also plays out in our individual bodies and brains. Consider:

• During perimenopause, hormonal fluctuations can affect how a woman’s body stores fat. Stress levels also rise during these years (Little kids! Aging parents! Are you advancing in your CAREER!?), translating to higher levels of cortisol, a.k.a. the "stress hormone.” Cortisol itself leads to increased fat storage, particularly around the belly. In response, a woman might exercise even more vigorously and frequently, flooding her body with more cortisol, further counteracting the effect she’s hoping to achieve. Good times. 

• When experiencing pain, it’s easy to catastrophize about its cause and cast about for ways to make it stop. But this anxiety and tension can make the perception of pain even worse. One of the most paradoxical effects of opioids is that they can lead to hyper-sensitivity to pain, so even light touch becomes excruciating. 

• Being overly germ-conscious can reduce exposure to the normal environmental bugs we need to develop a robust immune response, leading to increased susceptibility to allergies and autoimmune diseases. Trying too hard to avoid viruses can lead to immunity debt, making symptoms more severe and long-lasting when we inevitably catch one.

• Overuse of antibiotics leads to antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

• Trying too hard to sleep can make sleep more elusive.

• Trying to smooth out every obstacle in a child’s path can make them less resilient, more anxious, and less confident and content.

• Forcing a picky eater to try new foods can create anxiety and stress around mealtime and create aversion to eating in general. The more pressure a kid feels, the more likely they are to grow even more selective in what they’ll eat.

So. Yikes. 

Maybe we should all just be sitting very, very still. Letting things play out. At the very least, integrating more and resisting less, because what you resist persists and grows in size (hat tip to Carl Jung and the philosophy of Aikido).

There’s a phrase that young people use: Bro, you’re doin too much. (Search on Etsy and you’ll find a colorful array of garments sporting the phrase.) Urban Dictionary defines it as “the act of overachieving without any results or purpose.” One might even say overachieving counterproductively. 

Diversity and resilience trainer Chloé Valdary likes to deploy it on X/Twitter in response to particularly, uh, overachieving tweets.

It tickles me. I say it in my head all the time, sometimes about myself, sometimes about others. You’re doing too much. Chill.

Performative virtue signaling? Doing too much.

Worrying about things I can’t change or control? Doing too much.

Too many yang workouts and not enough yin? Doing too much.

Giving in to apocalyptic dread? Trying to control how others perceive you? Disowning friends or family for having different points of view? Doing too much!

We’re just at the beginning of what’s sure to be a spicy election year. I don’t foresee an abundance of calm. My task, and maybe yours, will be to find the chill. Channel it and share it. Don’t overreact, don’t catastrophize, don’t lash out, don’t fret. Don’t do too much. But also don’t overdo not doing too much. Sometimes you need to do too much to figure out what’s enough. We can be chill about that too. 

What will be will be. Probably.