The smartest thing a high performer can do is to hit the brakes. The best cars have powerful engines, but they also have the best brakes to let the drivers turn a corner without flying off the track. The problem is that for driven people, slowing down feels like failing.
But the same smarts that make you capable can also get you stuck. Drven people suffer from the pressures of perfectionism, being overwhelmed, and this existential loneliness. Your instinct is usually to push harder.
But pushing harder makes it even worse. What happens when your car is stuck in the mud? You hit the gas, the tires spin, and you dig deeper.
I've seen this over and over again at MIT, on Wall Street, in boardrooms, at companies worth billions. So today, we will build four essential mental breaks that stop your greatest strengths from turning against you. And the fourth is the hardest one for most people to apply, but that's the one that might matter the most.
Let's go to the first break. Being good at thinking also mean you're very good at overthinking. Overthinking is a loop with no new input.
The same thoughts go on and on and on in circles getting louder with every cycle and you don't get anywhere. Overthinking solves nothing. You can't think your way to information you don't have.
You end up spending 3 hours analyzing a text message. Those dreadful three dots, you know, they appear, then they disappear and they appear again, then silence. You replay and you reinterpret what they said at dinner.
You obsess over patterns that may not exist. Imagining what someone else thinks about you doesn't make it accurate. Mind readading is a terrible, terrible relationship strategy.
The less information you have, the more stories your brain creates. When information is missing, your inner critic is happy to fill in the gaps. In a 2018 study, psychologist Erica Boothley found that after a conversation, people consistently underestimate how much the other person liked them.
No amount of intelligence can manufacture missing data. One honest, open conversation can produce more useful information and deeper connection than endless hours of overthinking. So when you catch yourself circling, overest your assumption.
First ask, what am I assuming? What am I assuming about this person about this situation? Second, what evidence will change my mind?
That's a very important question. And third, what is the smallest honest way to get to that evidence? Sometimes the test is just four golden words.
What did you mean? Or can you tell me more? Now, there's one caveat.
Over test doesn't mean keep testing forever. Your goal is to not arrive at 100% certainty. you'll never get there.
I apply the 70% rule. Most decisions should be made when you have about 70% of the information you need. If you wait for 90 or 95%, you're probably moving too slowly.
At some point, you have to stop asking your brain for an answer it doesn't have. Now, let's go to the second break. For those of us who are feeling overcommitted, the strange reward for being dependable is that you have to carry more.
People keep asking you for more because you make it seem so easy. Think about the person in your family who keeps everything moving. In mine, it's my wife.
School events, appointments, shopping, there's no day off. And she's also an oncologist taking care of cancer patients. She deals with life and death issues at work.
People with high self-control reported feeling more burdened by how much their co-workers and partners relied on them. In one study, participants were given two co-workers. One was highly disciplined, or at least they were told that, the other less so.
Then the participants were asked to hand out work to either one of them. Who would you give the extra task to? They gave more of it to the disciplined one of course and and that part is not surprising.
What came next was interesting. The participants believe the disciplined co-worker spent less effort getting the work done. The more capable you look, the more invisible your efforts become.
And you know I've made the same mistake myself. When I was a CEO we were very lucky. We were one of the fastest growing companies in the US.
I would constantly tell myself, "Oh, it'll be faster if I just do this myself and oh, I'll just sleep on the plane. " But the cost of your commitments can stay invisible even to you. So, what do you do when you feel overcommitted?
You can overpric your yes. Make it rare. For every meaningful commitment, ask three questions.
What are the benefits and who gets them? What are the costs and who pays them? These two questions help you triage.
If it helps everyone, keep it. If it helps you and costs others, fix it. If it's helping no one, get rid of it.
But the dangerous one is when it benefits others and you keep paying the costs. That's where the third question comes in handy. Is this a gift or tax?
A gift can cost you enormously and it might still be worth giving. Caring for your children, giving your attention to your friend, those are gifts you can give willingly. Taxes, on the other hand, are the commitments that are assumed, recurring, and hard to renegotiate out of.
Somewhere along the way, you stop choosing it. That's where you increase the price of your yes. At work, you can say, "Sure, I can take this on.
What comes off of my plate? " With your friends, you can say, "Yeah, I'll hold a book club if the rest of you can handle the food. " You will keep carrying things for people you love.
Because some things in life aren't transactions, but for everything else, name your price before you say yes. Now comes the third break. For those of us who suffer from what I like to call perfectionitis, you may tell yourself you are a perfectionist, but all you have is a finish line that keeps moving.
If done means there's nothing left to improve, you'll never get there. But the version that you think isn't good enough might be the version that wins. A friend of mine is a gifted musician, a phenomenal singer.
[music] For years, she sang in other people's bands, traveled the world, and she never thought of herself as a songwriter. Then her son turned five, so she wrote an entire album of children's songs for him. And when it was finished, she wasn't happy with it.
It was like, "Ah, these are simple songs. " [music] But then she took a random chance and submitted it to the Grammys. And that year, not only was she nominated, she won the Grammy.
It completely changed her life. And I always think about that story. If you keep overpolishing, you'll never put your work out in the world.
It makes completion emotionally impossible. A lot of what we think is overpolishing is actually the fear of rejection. I have it for this channel.
I research and write everything you see, everything you hear. And when I sit down to think about the next topic, which is every week, it nearly breaks me every single time because I am convinced that I have finally run out of ideas and I sit at my desk or go for a long walk convinced that this is the week where it all comes crashing down. Goodbye YouTube.
you know, then I remind myself that all I have to do is to show up every week. So, I just start writing something. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe it's a terrible first draft.
And I keep tinkering and every week slowly but surely that little opening at the end of the tunnel, it starts showing up. And when I'm done with that video, regardless of whether viewers like you will receive it with love or not, I only have one job to do come Monday morning. Focus on shipping the next video.
When you want to overpolish, try to over ship. Tech companies call it MVP, minimum viable product, the smallest version that works in real hands. so the next one can get better.
You will always see something to improve. That doesn't mean that you're not finished. And by the way, if you like these videos, I think you'll like my newsletter, too.
I love writing it. One insight, one tool, one practice every Tuesday. The link is below.
It's totally free. And now the fourth break. Because if you are an overcommitted overthinker who is an overp polisher, it is very likely that you are also feeling completely alone.
I do sometimes and that's why our last break is over ask. The more capable you become, the easier it is for people to assume you're fine. People can care about you deeply and still have no idea what you need.
This is the most dangerous loop. You look fine and self- sustainable, so nobody asks you if you're okay. So, you decide to handle it all.
And that makes them believe that they should just leave you alone. So, they do. And the spiral leaves you disconnected, lonely, living a life only in your head.
I was having coffee in New York City with a 28-year-old marketing manager and she told me she was worried that her boss thought she was an underperformer and she was planning on borrowing money to go to business school. And I asked her like, "How much of this are you actually sure about? " And she said she was sure about almost none of it.
She was afraid to ask because she didn't want to hear the answer. and she was just all alone fighting her own battles in her own head. So we literally practiced that conversation at Starbucks for an hour.
So the next week she found the courage and finally had that conversation with her boss. Now there were some minor concerns about her performance but they loved the way she was such a great culture fit. There was no plan of firing her.
The conversation instead digressed into what kind of training she should get that the company would pay for. So now she can keep her job. She's not getting fired and can pursue her MBA all at the same time.
All you have to do is ask for help. Nobody can help with something they can't see. Researchers at University of Chicago found that people who needed help guessed that others won't give it or that it would be a burden.
They were wrong on both counts. According to that study, people say yes more often than you [clears throat] think. So, ask sooner, ask more often, ask before it feels comfortable, ask before you're drowning.
One thing I've learned is better to ask for something specific. Can you look at this for 10 minutes or I've been feeling alone and cut off lately. Could we take a walk in the city next weekend?
I'd love that. And this is the final point. Give them the permission to say no.
That's okay. Shrug it off. Ask someone else.
And if they help, tell them afterwards what their help meant. That's how asking becomes a relationship. Remember that question about gift versus tax.
You're capable, right? So, you've spent years giving gifts to everyone around you. When you ask your guides and your partners for help, remember they're equally eager to give you that same gift.
You know, the tallest trees on Earth are coast redwoods. Some rise more than 300 ft into the air, but their roots don't go nearly as deep as you might imagine. They spread outward and wrap around the roots of the trees next to them.
The tallest trees in the world don't stand alone. You don't have to either. Let someone in.
Don't make the people who love you guess how to love you. Thank you. And I love you.
