Episode Description:
In this episode of What If For Authors, Claire dives into a dilemma nearly every author—and person—faces: having too much to do. Drawing from her own experience of hitting a breaking point with an overpacked schedule, Claire reflects on the deeper reasons behind our tendencies to take on too much. She explains how our Enneagram type, cultural overlays, and fears contribute to the overwhelming cycle of busyness, and offers insights into how we can reclaim control by embracing limitations and being intentional about what we choose to let go.
Key Takeaways:
The Overwhelming Cycle of Too Much To Do: Claire shares a personal story of burnout and explains how she realized that it was time to start intentionally letting people down. Instead of just saying no to new projects, she had to go back and say no to things she had already committed to.
Cultural Overlays and Enneagram Types: Claire discusses the concept of cultural overlays in the Enneagram and how societal expectations, like those found in capitalism or specific community dynamics, can influence our behaviors. When our Enneagram type aligns with these cultural overlays, it can make it harder to break the cycle of busyness.
The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Busyness: Many of us equate busyness with productivity or worth, when in reality, being busy is often a way to avoid confronting our fears, limitations, or mortality. Claire explains how these lies manifest differently for each Enneagram type, but ultimately keep us from living a meaningful life.
The Power of Doing Less: Claire argues that doing fewer things can actually make each task more meaningful and impactful. By acknowledging our limitations and making intentional choices, we can create a more fulfilling life and career.
Practical Steps to Reclaim Control: Claire challenges listeners to look at their calendars and identify at least one thing that they will choose not to do—not something they’ll reschedule, but something they’ll intentionally remove to make space for more important things. She encourages a mindset shift from trying to do everything to intentionally choosing what matters.
Why You Should Listen: If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by your to-do list, this episode will resonate with you. Claire not only addresses why we end up doing too much, but also provides insights into how to break the cycle of endless busyness. Whether you're an author struggling to balance writing with life or anyone caught in the trap of "hustle culture," this episode will provide you with actionable steps to start reclaiming your time.
Join the Conversation: What tasks do you find yourself taking on that don’t actually need to be done? Share your experiences with Claire by emailing contact@ffs.media or connecting on social media.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs.media/sustain. I experienced this very poignant moment last year when I was sitting at my desk in my office, uh, looking back and forth between my double booked Google calendar and my Kanban board with way too many post it notes in the doing section.
It occurred to me that what I was trying to accomplish was, in fact, literally impossible. Emotionally, it felt like I was letting everyone down. I wasn't seeing my friends enough, I wasn't spending enough time with my dog, who I knew was in the final few months of her life, I'd been neglecting basically every home responsibility, and I was still, somehow, two weeks behind on my writing.
[00:01:00] I was tapped, y'all. Finally, I heard myself admitting what felt like defeat, but also was like a huge relief. It was time to start letting people down. That's what I realized. Honestly, I'd probably already been letting people down, or maybe that was just a story I was telling myself since my standards tend to be way higher than what anyone would ever expect of me, but it was time for me to take back control and be intentional with who I was going to let down.
This didn't just mean putting up boundaries where I say no to any new projects, right? This wasn't just, I'm not going to take any more new projects on. This meant going back and saying no to projects that I'd already agreed to and begun working on. I knew it was going to be painful, but to be honest, life was already pretty painful in that moment with trying to juggle all the shit that [00:02:00] for whatever reason I'd assumed that I had the superhuman abilities to pull off without a problem. It was, it was painful to have to reach out to people and say, Hey, this thing I agreed to, I won't be doing it any longer.
But it wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be. As it turned out, most of the fear of how painful it would be was all in my head. Because Everyone understands what it's like to be completely overwhelmed. This is unfortunately a very shared experience. So the people I had to reach out to, they could by and large relate.
A lot of people were impressed that I was even saying no to things that I'd already agreed to. Some people voiced that they felt inspired to do the same. And of course, not everyone was super thrilled that I was dumping some of my responsibilities, but it still felt so good for me to do that. I was able to see with some clarity that their [00:03:00] feelings about it were not an additional responsibility I needed to take on.
Despite my resistance and fear prior to letting people down in an intentional way, I found that life was so much more improved on the other side of it that I've made this a practice. Now listen, I haven't mastered the art of reasonable workload by any means. , My pattern of workaholism, or my many patterns of workaholism, are still very present and something that I have to keep a really close eye on.
But going through that process last year taught me a valuable lesson about how much work I take on, how much work other people take on, and how there simply is, by every definition, too much fucking work to do. That's why in this week's episode, we're going to ask the question that I think everyone will relate to, and there's not much that everyone relates to in this world.
But if there [00:04:00] is, this would be it. And that's the question of, what if I have too much to do?
I understand that this is more of an I have too much to do rather than a what if, since we're all trying to do too much all the time. You may not think that you are, but I can almost guarantee that you are.
And I'll tell you why throughout this episode, and how your patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving are getting you back into the same mess over and over again. Whether or not you listen to me and decide to push through the pain by being intentional about letting others down, that's totally up to you.
But I'm gonna spell it out for you.
There's this thing in the Enneagram called overlays, it's a concept, these are sort of cultural values associated with a particular type that we tend to take on by osmosis just as a matter of being part of that culture. So when I say cultures, I can mean, , culture of our family of origin, the school we went to, our religious groups, or even the country we live [00:05:00] in.
So it's interesting to ask ourselves how we're relating to these overlays, or the context in which we live. If one of the overlays is the same type as your Enneagram type, there are certain challenges that go along with that, that other types won't face. So, for example, the U. S. has a Type 3 Achiever overlay in many ways. Predominantly, capitalism is a Type 3 system that rewards people for what they produce, which is what the Type 3 Achievers love to do, to create things.
Achievers love to create. tend to love playing the game of capitalism because they are designed in such a way that they tend to be the best at it. But if you've read Sustain Your Author Career, you probably know that this is one of those stupid games with stupid prices that we all engage in. There is no end or finish line to the game of capitalism.
Just to continue this example, um, as we can see quite plainly in the people who seem to be winning it, the billionaires who no longer actually need to [00:06:00] think about the amount of money they have in terms of what it will do for their security and meeting their needs. But the idea of giving up the game of making more would require those people to sit and consider what else there is to life, which is one of the scariest things available to us as a pastime.
So instead they just try to win the game even more and get more money. They want to be the richest, right? Because what else is there? Right. And I'm not trying to rag on threes here by any means. Not every billionaire is a three, not everyone engaging in capitalism is a three, obviously. , it just so happens that if you are living in a capitalist system and you're a three, the hollow rewards that you think will make you happy are readily available.
and you're the best at getting them, which means you're the most likely to get stuck in this particular design of hamster wheel. Now, in say, a religious community that may have a type one overlay, the ones are going to be best at that game, [00:07:00] but the game tends to be performing righteousness, also known as self righteousness, which does not actually make the one feel like they're already good and perfect.
Instead, it feeds the insecurity that they may not be good or that they're only good if they're the best. good person in the community. So those are just a few examples of how our overlays play into things of our dominant type. , our Enneagram type also happens to match the overlay of the culture. Now, if our dominant type doesn't match the overlay, it's not uncommon to see people try to play the game anyway.
But they don't tend to win and they burn out. So this may seem like a bad thing, but it's often the first step toward liberating yourself from this game, right? You're sort of unplugging from the matrix. Because if you can't win the game, you're more likely to stop trying to play.
You're more likely to go, okay, what else could there be besides this? [00:08:00] And we know, hopefully by now, how important of a question that is. So if you're living under a capitalist system, and also living under an overlay of righteousness, like some sort of moral or ethical based group, and it doesn't have to be religious, it could be an activist group of any kind.
And if you're living in a society with a lot of polarization that encourages people to be, you know, in one group or the other, and sort of fanatics, then if you're not careful, you'll take on some of that three energy, some of that one energy, and some of that six energy, the Achiever, the Reformer, and the Loyalist.
Each of those is very encouraging for, uh, doing a lot and not letting the group down. The three overlay will encourage you to believe that your worth is wrapped up in the tasks you can cross off your list and the amount of deliverables you produce. The one overlay will likely make you feel like you have to die on every hill.
You have to take, have [00:09:00] an opinion, a hard, fast opinion on everything. And you have to have high standards in what you do and aim to make it as close to perfect as possible and never ever be an irresponsible person. And the sixth overlay will intensify some of those feelings of responsibility that the one has while also shifting your ideas of duty and service.
So you can see how all of that is a recipe for taking on too much. But even without those three particular overlays, each type has a reason why it doesn't want to admit that there are limitations to what we can do on a daily, yearly, and lifetime basis. If you've ever read 4000 Weeks Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Berkman, you're probably already familiar with this concept of how humans hate to face their own mortal limitations.
I've been rereading that book lately, just, you know, a few minutes here and there, with a pen, underlining the absolute shit out of it. , and while I don't disagree with any of the points he makes, [00:10:00] frankly, it's rare to find a book that I don't disagree with the points, I think they could actually be even further refined and clarified for people to see how your particular core fear It's keeping you from admitting that you have limitations, and that it's okay, and that life actually feels fuller when you agree to do less.
So, this is something I've certainly found in my own life. You've probably found it moment to moment here and there in your own life, But still this truth is one of those things that's so good and so delicious that you've gotta share it with other people once you try it. Also, like half of the coaching I do for authors lately is just begging them to admit that they're trying to do too much, and that they don't actually have to do that much.
To have a full life and a successful author career,
most of the tasks we do in a day. are designed to trick us into feeling positively about ourselves. So, [00:11:00] 1s will stay busy to feel responsible and to believe that they're doing all they can. 2s will stay busy to feel like they're needed. 3s will stay busy to feel like they're productive and successful.
Fours will stay busy to keep life feeling complicated and mistaking that for it being meaningful. Fives stay busy to convince themselves that they're competent and capable enough to handle all the things. Sixes stay busy to convince themselves they're prepared and reliable. Sevens stay busy to prove to themselves they're fun and interesting.
Eights stay busy to prove to themselves that they're strong. And nines stay busy to prove to themselves that they're connected with a lot of different things in this world. Now, the flip side of what we're trying to prove is, what are we trying to avoid by staying busy? What thoughts and feelings are we trying to hold off with our overwhelming and unrealistic [00:12:00] amount of action that we're expecting of ourselves?
So let's drill down into this a little bit, and this is gonna maybe cut deep for some of us, but we need to cut deep to carve out some of the bullshit that we are asking of ourselves that are making us tired all the time. So we're gonna do, hopefully, a minimally invasive surgery on ourselves with this.
Okay, so let's start with the nines, the peacemakers. Sometimes Nines can fall into lethargy and inaction, sure, but I do see plenty of nines who take a lot of action. It's just not necessarily meaningful, and it doesn't move the needle forward. This is often driven by the nine's fear of conflict, and it looks like a pattern of recognizing urgency.
If I don't do this, there will be conflict very soon, right? It's urgent. Urgent action is needed to avoid conflict. So the Nine falls into their defense mechanism of narcotization through a [00:13:00] trance of busyness, putting out fire after fire. If this Nine has not learned to say no when someone asks them to do something, Then they're so preoccupied with urgency that they haven't left themselves any time or space to think about what's important.
Looking at importance is scary for nines because it requires them to actually assess what they want and desire out of life. Something that a lot of nines don't like to think about because it might put them in conflict with what other people want and desire out of life. So instead, You nines may be opting to make yourself feel very busy by doing a lot of urgent things, making sure there's always something urgent to keep you occupied.
You can see how this cycle would continue indefinitely if not interrupted with a little bit of awareness. Sometimes people don't think that they're nines. People who are nines don't think that they're nines because they're so busy. They think they're threes or ones because so much of their busyness is [00:14:00] focused on maybe caring for other people.
When you pop the hood, you may realize that the reason these nines are so busy is a fear of conflict that might arise from saying no and a fear of pausing to look at importance rather than just urgency. So some nines check out by playing video games for hours and some check out by going through the motions of putting out fires.
I'll be really honest with you eights, you challengers. A lot of why you have too much to do is because you're pushing back against the reality of your own mortality. Nothing threatens to control your life more than the fact that it will end someday. And there's nothing you can do about that. But there's no amount of forcing it that will change the fact.
That death will someday harm and control you. There's no amount of being strong and independent that will bend that reality to your will. So ask [00:15:00] yourself how much you're taking on to try and convince yourself that maybe if you get enough practice on the battleground, you'll be able to avoid that final loss.
Okay, sevens, you're doing too much because your fear of missing out has taken the reins. The vulnerability of the seven is limitation. It's the thing that you enthusiasts build your whole life around avoiding if you aren't mindful. So even if you are mindful, you've probably built your whole life around it because it's really hard to negate those patterns if you're not yet aware that they are the blueprints for how you're building your life.
The problem with FOMO is that it brings our attention away from what is and shifts it in a bunch of different directions toward what could be or what isn't in that moment. On some level you believe that this will protect you from missing out on things, but what it actually does is keep you from [00:16:00] experiencing anything truly and deeply enough to achieve real satisfaction.
The only thing that can ever bring you satisfaction is the present moment. You may get a hit of dopamine from planning future things or thinking of new possibilities, but satisfaction isn't just adding up a bunch of dopamine hits. It requires being present, having gratitude, and recognizing the fullness of what is.
So all those projects you have going on, all those big plans, those are probably a reaction to this fear of limitations. And they're not working for you. If you ever want satisfaction, you have to do less, not more. Sevens.
Type six, the loyalist, tends to have their focus flow toward what could go wrong. If you're a six and you don't know this yet, the other types don't spend as much time thinking about what could go wrong and trying to create a contingency for it to avoid having it happen. This belief that if you [00:17:00] prepare enough, bad things won't happen.
It can leave you very busy in your author career and beyond. You'll end up doing too much because for every contingency plan that you believe worked to stop something bad from happening, how many plans did you put into place that were useless and that you didn't end up needing? How many courses did you take?
How many opinions from experts did you go seek out before you allowed yourself to take a single action? Your plate is going to fill up very quickly if that pattern is showing up in your life, if you're over preparing for every contingency, if you notice that you're seeking guidance constantly hoping that some crumb of knowledge will be the thing that saves you from having to take a risk, you have my complete and total permission to stop playing that game.
That has no end.
Type fives, the investigators, you may not think that your life is going to fill up because you really like your alone time and you set good boundaries with other people, [00:18:00] but there's still a strong chance that you are doing too much, that you've created too much work for yourself to do. This work may look like the research you feel you must do before you can begin your writing.
But that's still doing too many things and doing. Too many of those particular kind of individual tasks, it's very likely that you're not leaving much energy for doing things outside of those pursuits. The kind of things that fives require for growth, like connecting with others rather than isolating.
Your fear of being incompetent. Or incapable is very likely driving you to add too many things to your life to prove to yourself that you can handle it all.
Type four is the individualists. Y'all may feel like you're overwhelmed much of the time, and then look at the reality of what you're doing each day and feel like it doesn't quite. match up. So if you're a four, ask yourself where your fear that your life is [00:19:00] insignificant or lacking meaning may be causing you to conflate complexity with meaning.
So just because you're making every task more complex doesn't necessarily mean that the tasks are more meaningful. It just means that you're going to get overwhelmed much quicker. I see this happening with fours and their writing. This need to be the most original, the most creative, the most unique can sometimes make the task of writing a book seem out of reach simply because things that could be both meaningful and simple are now being made complicated.
Fours, ask yourself where making what you're currently doing simpler could, in fact, make it more meaningful as you're able to be present with it and not so worried about whether or not it reflects your significance in this world.
Type three, the achievers y'all are absolutely doing too much out of a fear [00:20:00] that a lack of accomplishment equates to a lack of worth as a human being. I don't think I've met type three author who wasn't doing way more than they needed to create a successful career.
The problem may not be that the three's books aren't selling. It may be that their attention flows toward the fact that someone else's books are selling more. I'm also hard pressed to find a three who doesn't believe the lie that if they're just effective enough, if they just find the right time management system or hack, they can do all these things and more.
It's this Misguided belief that the problem of having too many things to do in a day is not that the three is running on adrenaline from feeling like they're falling short and failing, but that they just need to be more efficient. This doesn't address the underlying question of what the hell it's actually for.
And if it's truly achieving that aim. It's also [00:21:00] common for threes to begin to equate the feeling of exhaustion with the lifestyle of a successful person while at the same time trying to appear as if the whole thing is not that strenuous. So I see that with threes a lot wanting to be seen as a hard worker and recognized for it, wanting to be acknowledged for how much work they're doing and how much they're accomplishing and how much they're sacrificing outside of their projects to get the projects done.
While also hoping to make it look effortless. If you're a three and you're trying to walk this line between the two ideas, guess what? You can stop trying. The problem has never been that you aren't effective enough with your time and processes. That's not why you're feeling overwhelmed. It's not your lack of effectiveness.
Your type is often called the effective person because you have a gift for finding the most effective way to do things. So that's not the problem. The problem is that you're on a treadmill and when the pace starts to feel comfortable, [00:22:00] you increase the speed. Pretending like you could eventually run a hundred miles an hour if you just believed in yourself and found the right training regimen.
So consider where you've started to equate action and doing things with being worthy. That's obviously a false equivalency and you may notice a lot of really interesting insights there if you start poking around at it. Now type two, the helper, ends up with too many things to do simply because of a lack of boundaries.
Whereas the nine tends to struggle to say no because they don't want conflict, the two struggles to say no because if they aren't actively helping someone, they worry that they're not. Earning the love they could be. This of course comes from the false belief that you could ever earn enough love through service to match your need for unconditional love.
And of course, the first thing that goes undone on a Tuesday daily schedule is anything for themselves rather than for other people. Every two I [00:23:00] know is trying to do too much. Like an impossible amount. So, your pride is gonna tell you that you can somehow pull it off if you just care enough and are willing to self sacrifice enough.
But what if that's a bunch of bullshit? What if? What if that's just a lie? What if you can't do all of it? And is neglecting your own deep desire to get your work done actually showing yourself? Unconditional love, or are you depriving yourself of love by doing that?
So if you're a two, doing less is going to scare the shit out of you because you'll go through appreciation withdrawal. People who are used to you doing things for them, they may act scandalized. They may even imply that you are being selfish. But if you ever want to create something meaningful in your career, You gotta figure out who those entitled people are as quickly as possible and [00:24:00] stop doing things for them so that they can learn to do those things themselves.
That is often what true help looks like. And that's the only way you're gonna start feeling less overwhelmed. Okay, type one, the reformer. I talked a little bit about why you may be doing too much, uh, through my own story, but it's really important to break the cycle. By looking at where you've equated being good with being tired, miserable, and depriving yourself of joy.
So if you're a one, you don't have to put the ethic in work ethic. Who says there's anything moral about chasing perfection? It's a fool's game. The fear of the one is being bad or corrupt and the vulnerability is criticism. So how much of what you do each day is simply in hopes of avoiding criticism from others or trying to just silence your inner critic?
Anything you're doing To avoid [00:25:00] criticism should be scrutinized very closely to see if it's actually contributing to the impact of your work or if it's wasting your damn time.
So all of us become overwhelmed with too many things to do because our fears, which function on this illogical logic and promise us things that we could never truly achieve, are really spurring us on. Our fears tell us lies that we could. Avoid the normal pain of being mortal and living a life knowing that death is around the corner for all of us But we can't avoid that Inevitably, we will have to face it So these lies promise us refuge from the reality that any day could be our last It's kind of sweet and kind the way these lies We tell ourselves about our capacity to do it all the way they're trying to protect us You It certainly comes from a place of good intentions or so I like to believe, but [00:26:00] lies are lies. The number of maneuvers we will pull to avoid looking reality in the face, looking our limitations in the face, and then experiencing the pain that is necessary to leave space in our lives instead of trying to fill all of it, those maneuvers are quite astounding.
If you are deciding to reclaim control over your life, if you want to do fewer things and have fewer things on your plate day to day, unfortunately, you got to stop running from that fear. Turn around and face it. You have to accept that there are painful parts of life that are not worth escaping or avoiding.
Because on the other side of that pain, you get something so much richer and deeper. On the other side of that pain is where you start building a meaningful life in the present, not lamenting one in the past through nostalgia or regret or planning [00:27:00] one in the future, but building one every day. In the present
easily half of the things you do in your life don't actually need to be done at least half of the emails you're responding to may not require a response and the world will not fall apart if you just delete them and when you're responding to those emails. What more meaningful thing are you neglecting?
We're so scared of the trade off that we will lie to ourselves and say there is no trade off. That we are somehow above the reality that every time we're here in this moment, there's an infinite number of other places where we are not.
We're all trying to do too many things because we're all lying to ourselves. So if you're wondering, what if I have too much to do? The answer is that you've created this by letting your fear lie to you, telling you that there's a way to [00:28:00] avoid the essential pain of mortality. You've let your fear take the wheel and drive you to this place, but you can take back the wheel by facing the pain of knowing that you won't do all the things you want to do, or that will help trick you into believing you have infinite time on this earth. It's within your power to begin facing this pain and to begin disappointing not only others, but yourself in important ways that make the things you do each day actually carry meaning because you've chosen to do those things at the cost of others.
Doing less makes each thing you do matter more. And that can scare the shit out of a lot of us because then we have to consider what meaning we want to create in our life. Our short and finite life.
We don't have an infinite number of books we get to write. Writing a book we don't [00:29:00] care much about means not writing a book that we do care about. Spending time on social media means not spending time in person with our friends and family. Taking that marketing course means not sitting by a lake and thinking deep thoughts about life.
We can only use busyness and overwhelm as a tool to avoid these choices for so long before it catches up with us. Before the lies really start to wear thin, and we start to get glimmers of the reality of our limited time on earth. But we do have a choice in this, and that's The great news, the terrifying and great news.
And I know that you are up to the task of making those choices.
So that's it for this week's episode of What If for Authors. Thanks for joining me, and I hope the time you spent listening to this episode and not doing every other thing was worth it for you. If you're ready for a challenge, look at your calendar [00:30:00] for the rest of the day and pick one thing that just will not be done.
Not something that you'll bump to a later date to make future you more overwhelmed, but something you will not do now or ever. See if you can find something. I bet you can.
Maybe don't make it be something like I'm never going to pick up my kids from school this afternoon, but I'm sure there's something that doesn't need to be done that's on your calendar. Because that's what we do. We put things on our calendars that don't need to be done. So human, so classically human.
Alright, I'm Claire Taylor, and I hope you'll join me next time for a brand new episode. Happy writing!