by Madeleine Van Hecke, PhD

A colleague stopped by my office one day and suggested we go to lunch. “No way,” I answered. “I haven’t gone to lunch for six months, I just eat at my desk – I’ve GOT to catch up.”

To which she responded: “And have you caught up?”

We all know the answer to that question. What can you do when you just can’t do it all? Here are three questions that can help you save your sanity when you’re between a rock and a hard place.

#1 Does this really have to be done?

You’re lying in bed in the morning, wide awake before your alarm goes off, because your To Do list woke you up. As you review each item on your list, ask yourself: Does this really have to be done?

Examples:

It might be nice to prepare a new slide presentation for the meeting, adding some cartoons (as soon as you have the time to search the net for material, fill out the internet forms to pay the licensing fees for these and download them) – but do you have to do that?

One woman I know hand-addresses and hand-decorates with stamp art the envelopes in which she mails all the notices of the events that her group sponsors. It’s a lovely way to personalize these, but when she’s overwhelmed with demands, does this have to be done?

As you go down your To Do list, question whether the activity is truly necessary. Even if it’s a required task, such as a monthly report for your boss, raise the “does this have to be done?” question. For example, maybe you suspect that your report is filed unread, a holdover from days gone by. Tell your boss you are trying to find a more efficient way to get the information she needs to her, and discuss just what she (or others) need from that report. It might turn out that a bulleted summary could replace your current five page report to everyone’s benefit.

#2 Do I have to be the one to do it?

If your answer to the question “Does this have to be done?” is “Yes! Absolutely!” for a particular task, then ask the question: “Do I have to be the one to do it?”

Example:

There’s work you could ask your associate or assistant to do, but you say: “By the time I explain to someone else what to do, it’s quicker to do it myself.”

It might be quicker in the short-term to do things yourself, but long-term you know you are costing yourself hours and hours of time. Ask yourself what you could delegate in your family life as well as your job. Then ask yourself what stops you from doing that.

1. I can’t do that because I can’t find the time it would take to train another person to do it, or to put together the information that they need to do the task, or to set up a system that could be followed easily by someone else (etc.).

2. I can’t do that because others won’t do the job as well as I would and then I end up re-doing their stuff anyway.

Question #3 offers a solution to both of these problems.

#3 Can I use the “perfectly adequate” rule here?

Once you’ve determined that a task must be done, ask: Instead of trying to make this perfect, could it be perfectly adequate? Would our purpose be accomplished just as well even if I set the bar a little lower?

Example:

One manager confided, “I keep re-doing reports until they are perfect. Even when I know that the report isn’t that important, that most people won’t even read it, and that those who do won’t notice the difference between my third draft and my tenth, I can’t seem to let it go at the third draft.”

If you are a perfectionist, it’s hard to lower your standards. Yet we all know that at times we don’t devote the same amount of time and care to all of our projects. When deadlines loom, when demands pile up, we act intelligently and adjust what we’re doing. We figure out what’s necessary to accomplish the purpose, and concentrate on those essentials.

If you use the perfectly adequate rule, you’ll do two valuable things.

1) Short-term, you’ll save yourself time in doing the tasks that you don’t feel you can delegate.

2) You’ll find it easier to delegate, because you’ll no longer demand that those who take over do a perfect job. You’ll be able to live with a perfectly adequate job.

And what if you used some of the time you saved to do what needs to be done so that others could take over some tasks, such as gathering the information they would need in order to do this? You’ll save even more time in the long run.

Do these tips really work?

When my mother was terminally ill, I devoted hours to her care so that she could remain at home. There was no way that I could also continue to do all that I had been doing in my teaching position, at the level of perfection I typically set for myself. So each morning as I thought about my To Do list, I did ask: Does this have to be done? Do I have to be the one to do it? And can I use the perfectly adequate rule?

As a result of asking these questions, I re-used many syllabi, lecture notes, and tests from previous classes (creating new ones failed the “does this have to be done?” criteria); I delegated many of my duties related to committee work, and I had my academic advisees do more preparation prior to our advising sessions so that these were streamlined.

In general I lowered the bar I set for my own work. You know what happened? Nothing. Nobody noticed. I think that nobody noticed for three reasons. One, I could rely on my past materials and preparation to carry me for that year because I had spent years perfecting them. Secondly, at times some of the people to whom I delegated things didn’t do them as well as I would have – but others in fact did them better in some ways, bringing innovative ideas to the job. Finally, this approach worked because it turned out that “perfectly adequate” was, truly, perfectly adequate. It did the job.

Yes, but …

Maybe you are thinking, “That might work for you, but it won’t work for me. I just can’t lower my standards. That’s just how I am.”

Ask yourself: “What would happen if I did lower your standards, at least a little?”

Most of the time, when we say “I can’t do that,” what we mean is something like this: “I can’t do that because if I did do that I’d feel anxious,” (or guilty, or disappointed in myself, or some other negative emotion we are trying to avoid). So the question becomes: Are you willing to tolerate some negative emotions, such as anxiety, in order get out from between the rock and the hard place?

Tolerating such emotions is not appealing. But the truth is that you will also experience stressful emotions if you don’t lower your perfectionist standards. The choice you face is a choice between the stress of feeling anxious because you are overwhelmed versus the stress of feeling anxious because you have lowered your standards. The difference between these two choices is that one of them can get you unstuck while the other leaves you jammed between a rock and a hard place.

Madeleine Van Hecke, PhD is the author of Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things, Prometheus Books, Inc., 2007. She offers workshops and seminars on reducing negativity in the workplace, improving communication, handling stress, and encouraging innovative thinking. For other free articles, including “What to Do When Other People’s Blind Spots Are Driving YOU Crazy,” visit www.overcomeblindspots.com.

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