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RSS dadofdivas, Dads

Are you the type of person that will say “Yes” at the drop of the hat? Do you tend to over-commit yourself to things outside of your family? If so, you probably are a “Yes” man, and welcome to the club.

J-Mom and I have had many conversations about being over-committed, not only with work, but with outside activities. I fill my time outside of work not only with kids and family, but also with Rotary and church activities (I said yes to being on the church council).

So why do I have such a hard time saying no? I don’t exactly know why this is a problem. I think much of it goes down to being an experience junky. I love meeting new people and making a difference in the world around me. Now you may say that having my family and making a difference in their lives should be enough, and I know this, but I still find myself at times falling into this trap.

It also is not just in my out of work life where I do this. I also tend to over-commit in my work life as well. Now don’t get me wrong, I do accomplish my commitments, but I do tend to say yes more than I probably should!

So is there help for an over-commitment addict (as J-Mom would probably call me)? I did some research and found some great resources that I thought I would share with all of you (as I am not going to provide a top ten list of things you should do as I currently do not do them).

So do I think that I can change overnight? Not even slightly. Do I think that with hard work I could make this change? You bet I can. The biggest thing that I know I have to do is to actually do it… this will be the hardest thing for me. It is not that I do not want to be with my family…far from it. My family is my life, but also in my life as I have already mentioned, I crave interaction. I do not have a lot of friends that I do things with here where I live and these are ways for me to connect with people.

I also though understand that I need to be fair to J-Mom to allow her to also have these opportunities and to do things for her as well so that she has an identity outside of being a mom. I think at times my over-commitment gets in the way of her ability to separate herself from her role as mom…which is not fair in the least.

So today I am looking for your advice.

  • How do I get past this over-committed lifestyle with work and within my personal life?
  • How have you done it in your own life?

September 23, 2008 |


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  1. avatar
    thisalicat    , Poker October 13, 2008 4:16 pm   

    So much stuff to do and no time to do it all! There is never any one right answer, I think we all wish there was just one solution, so it wouldn’t seem so difficult on balancing our time..

    …we want to help others, participate in making a difference in something or someone, but then life gets stretched very thin with overcommitments, family relationships, jobs, guilt at not doing enough or being there enough in any one area of your life…

    I often wish I had 2 me’s, one to take care of the bills, housework, money, maintenance, meals, any day to day drudgery, 24/7…the other to have all the time in the world 24/7 to be a part of social networks of support for the community, for family, for friends, for strangers, for myself…..

    But I know I can’t do it all…so often I have to do a reality check and determine how much time (in minutes or hours) I am able to commit (around family and work) and any outside commitments can only fall in that time.

    So if several commitments don’t take very long and can fit in that time…I’ll agree to them all..but if only 1 commitment takes all that time, I have to choose if it is more important to do that one thing than several things.

    For me there are “subsets” of juggling time. I compartmentalize 3 areas of life:
    -Family (my marriage, my kids, my extended family, my extremely close friends)
    -Work (Paid and Non Paid Work)
    -Other (friends, volunteer stuff, councils, etc…all fall in other)

    Within each area, I juggle time that is loosely allotted to each area…I try to minimize the overlap of time.

    Not an exact science…and it’ll always be a “struggle juggle” …because life is not meant to be rigid :)

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