Good challenges and … the harder kind
Sarah Twichell (of the blog Edge to Center) asked me today What makes the difference between a challenge you rise to and a challenge you’re overwhelmed by? Good question, and I had to think about it for a bit. Here are a few things I thought of:
On the overwhelm side:
- tasks that I think are going to get a lot of negative judgement from others
- tasks that I can’t break down into pieces that I know how to do
- tasks where you can’t get feedback on whether it’s going OK until the end
- times when I’m not managing adequate self-care,
- excessive multi-tasking.
On the successful side:
- when someone is depending on me
- when lines of authority are clear
- when the purpose of the task is clear
- when I have enough time to make a plan
- when I can reach out for support
Challenges don’t fall neatly into one category or another. I can easily be daunted by one aspect of a major project even as I make progress on related areas. Sometimes I just have to plunge ahead, overwhelmed or not.
Thinking about this helps me be more sympathetic to other people’s overwhelm — and helps me think of some ways to improve how I’m delegating so I’m not adding to the problem.