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How Being a Go-getter Can Ruin Your Life
It doesn’t happen overnight. One day you graduate from college and, after a few months, land your first serious 9 to 5er. After several months in the working world, you learn that your favorite lifestyle blog is canvassing for writers, and you jump at the chance to channel the creativity you’ve been forced to abandon in cubicle land.
Several weeks later, as a resume booster, you decide to volunteer as a tutor one evening at your community writing center and enjoy it so much that you pencil it in twice a week. On top of all of these commitments, you train new employees at your office on Saturday mornings and the new online magazine that you’ve launched consumes any time that’s leftover.
Without realizing that it’s happened, your desire to be a career-focused, go-getter has backfired on you. Rather than effortlessly juggling your myriad obligations, you find yourself overbooked, burned out, and dangerously close to washing your hands of everything and holing up in your bedroom indefinitely.
Sound like anyone you know? As members of society’s most stressed demographic, it’s safe to bet that many millennials feel overwhelmed by the self-imposed responsibilities that we’ve crammed into our schedules. However, with an average of 250 applicants for every corporate job opening, Generation Yers are taught that in order to snag your dream job or score that next big promotion, you have to out-do your competition by racking up the most career-enhancing projects, volunteer activities, and internships. Yet, in the process of catapulting our careers, so many millennials are crashing, burning, and failing miserably at maintaining a nearly obsolete concept: work-life balance.
Why is a healthy separation between these two areas of your life important, you ask? Because while powering through an energy-sucking schedule may work for a while, constant “on-time” will eventually catch up with you, leaving you physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and mentally depleted of the tools necessary to be the ladder-climber you were trying to be in the first place.
So, whether your work-life balance is slightly off-kilter or worse, non-existent, fear not! Even the most far gone go-getters can learn simple ways to reclaim their lives (and their sanity).
1. Say ‘no’ more often than ‘yes’-Believe it or not, saying ‘yes’ to every career-enhancing opportunity that comes along doesn’t automatically make your resume stronger. Keep your downtime sacred by selecting one or two opportunities (in addition to your full-time job) to pursue. By not spreading yourself too thin, you’ll be able to devote more energy to the projects that you’ve committed to and impress future employers with your narrowed focus and high impact.
2. Unplug from social media-While a strong Twitter presence might be important to maintaining connections, it’s not healthy to be living from tweet to tweet 24/7. Setting aside an hour or two each day (not including sleeping hours) to disconnect from social media will help you to relax and refocus, not to mention provide you with the energy necessary to fully engage once you login again.
3. Make time for family and friends-It’s easy to put those closest to you on the backburner when ambition takes center stage in your life. However, taking a break from work to call your mother or enjoying a brunch date with girlfriends is the perfect way to preserve balance, de-stress, and reaffirm that while a solid resume might be critical, success is nothing if you don’t have people to share it with.
4 Responses
This is spot on! But, it’s so hard to be okay with that mentality when all of our examples of success suggest otherwise. I mean you take a look at the biographies of people you look up to and they are 5 pages long with accomplishments. Maybe we need to start highlighting people who are really great at what they do and have time to take care of themselves.
Hi Marissa – I’m so glad to hear that this post resonated with you! While it’s so easy to write about taking a step back and removing ourselves from the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, I absolutely agree that it’s easier said than done. You’re spot on in suggesting that the media industry should start promoting go-getters who prioritize work-life balance–hopefully the more we vocalize its importance, the more we’ll begin to see a change! Thanks again for commenting!
Brava for this article’s topic. You bet burnout hits mostly women on this generation (although typically you ‘hit the wall and slide down it’ when you reach your 40’s). It is a definite must to follow the advice here and get yourself a healthy separation to recoup you in your life. We women are so adept at helping and doing for everyone else that we forget to put ourselves first and foremost on our lists. Say no, create time, recoup energy and build life on your terms, we say. Congrats on this article and good health to those who follow these offerings. (The Burnout Queens xx)
I find all those who like helping others no matter the age can get caught up in “over-doing” so that they forget to put themselves first. It’s something we have to remind ourselves and have our friends and partners remind us. However, my thoughts of standing out to get a job don’t have to be all about plumping up the resume in an unhealthy way but how you can make an impression in your approach to get the specific job. You are probably of the same mind.