On the perils of overcommitment
By Sir Benjamin Treadwell · Contributing Writer
How many extracurriculars are you involved in? How many club meetings will you have in the next two weeks? I ask these questions mainly of freshmen (welcome, welcome!) and sophomores, and sometimes even the upperclassmen. I ask because I wonder how many Grovers have caught the classic Grover-achiever ailment: overcommitment.
Overcommitment is when you are involved in so many things that you are unable to adequately fulfill your responsibilities. Do you find yourself constantly dropping one task to run to another? Do you feel caught in between a club rock and an academic hard place with the weight of stress squashing your soul? Have you discovered that your extracurriculars are barring you from completing your school assignments on time? Are you scrounging for the barest shreds of spare time? Are you getting at least six hours of sleep?
If various clubs, organizations and other assorted obligations make you struggle academically, become addicted to caffeine or regularly skip daily time with the Lord and His Word, you have overcommitted. Some people might not consider this to be a problem. They might justify it by claiming their campus involvement is worth it for the resume; that their cortisol levels aren’t really a problem; that they must drink caffeine, lest they get horrible headaches. Others might prefer to have less mounded on their plate but cannot bear to let anyone down. But are these things worth a spiritually dry, bleary-eyed and hunchbacked four years?
Aside from all the negatives like stress, sleep-deprivation and bad grades, overcommitment’s key symptom is the inability to do things with excellence. Excellence is one of our college’s core pillars! President Lingo has addressed this topic repeatedly. Excellence is not merely some institutional mantra, but something that all Christians should strive to exemplify.
If we want to glorify God in all we do, we want to do all things to the best of our ability. But we cannot do anything with excellence if we are scatter-brained and perpetually short on time. Therefore, we can glorify God better by doing fewer things with excellence and having time for rest and Bible study, rather than doing many things with less than our best.
To that end, I recommend two to three extracurriculars at most, less if you have the maximum credit hours. If you regularly don’t have time for daily Bible study, change your time priorities. Make time for sleep — consider at least six or seven hours. Finally, never forget to build in time for the little things that keep your life in order.
Some of you may wonder how to get out of your prior commitments. Here is my advice: find the ones you are least committed to and bow out gracefully. Pass your duties on responsibly, and with warning, to people with more time. To avoid new obligations, learn to say kindly, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time,” or “I have a conflicting obligation.” Do this before you feel the tightening hand of time’s absence around your chest.
With a balanced lifestyle, you will have time for fun without the anxieties of overcommitment. Know that, even if you make a few friends slightly sad, you will be able to show excellence in your remaining duties, and instead of a people-pleaser, you will be a God-pleaser.
