Does wanting to do a good job create overwork?

For me, this is a source of feeling good.

When I think I am doing a good job, I am feeling positive.

But I’ve seen this work against us when it comes to overworking.

If doing a good job means that there are never any mistakes, or any problems that come up, we might do a lot of overworking and overpreparing to ensure that we do a “good job”. 

It can also be very limiting, because maybe we don’t take on new experiences for fear of not doing a good job.

What we can do here instead is:
– decide ahead of time what a good job looks like to us and who we are working for
– setting aligned expectations
– learn to trust ourselves that if there is a mistake, or a problem that part of doing a good job is learning to handle it with grace, not overworking to control everything so that there are never any problems.

Here’s something fun too – you can tell yourself you are doing a good job in ANY moment of the day.

You get to decide what that means and when you tell yourself you’re doing a good job.

 It can be very powerful to start to open this conversation up for yourself:

“Hey, I am doing a good job. I am doing what I said I would do today. I am creating. I am following through. I am showing up in a way that feels good to me.”

Don’t let telling yourself “I want to do a good job” be a way that you end up overworking.

Make sure this “want to do a good job” mindset that many of us who did well in school have is working for you and not causing you to overwork.