Contagious hassle

More is not always better. (Image by Peggychoucair)

On a recent project, I asked for some data from a member of the team.

I was looking for more information on the outliers in the data set — the easily visible spikes.

When I got the report, it had comprehensive information on not only the handful of outliers, but also regarding another twenty-five samples. Everything was presented very prettily — the report must have taken hours.

However, the inclusion of the additional information didn’t help. It made it difficult to focus on the outliers.

All of that extra work, done in the spirit of being helpful and conscientious, made the project harder.

This happens often. When we apply straight-A student energy in a professional context, it creates a contagious hassle.

I’ll give you another example. A colleague of mine is working to curb a habit of sending long emails to her friends and colleagues. She wants to be helpful, and she’s willing to spend forty-five minutes sharing her best expertise and showing care to one person.

The problem is that the person on the other end doesn’t necessarily receive such an email as a gift. The five hundred words of thoughtful, caring advice might actually feel like an obligation in the middle of a busy workday. Are we supposed to send a five hundred words back?

Of course, straight-A student energy can ruin school, too. If students are rewarded for doing more than is required, they will do it, creating more work for the teacher and raising the bar for everyone else. The problem is, a lot of this extra effort is showy, unnecessary, or even expensive, like a full-color laser printed report cover or a batch of finely decorated, on-theme cookies to go along with the report. These things don’t necessarily contribute to the learning objectives and carry the exhausting expectation of others’ approval.

I was once on a Zoom call where someone had spent hours crafting an elaborate video background as a tribute to the presenter. It was distracting and embarrassing. Everyone pretended not to notice it so as not to sidetrack the meeting or reward the attention-seeker for this display.

Of course, it’s not always attention or praise that the “above and beyond” people are after. Another driver is the need for safety and security. Some of us carry the belief that doing more than what was asked will make us invaluable and indispensable. After all, how could someone disapprove of getting more than they asked for?

As a mean old boss, though, I can say that getting more than I asked for can be frustrating. It means that my instructions weren’t followed. And if someone is desperate for a sense of safety, their outsize desire for my approval and reassurance will be a burden to me and complicate my work.

That may sound callous, but at the core of it is a desire for my team to find and enjoy their own ease, self-confidence, and satisfaction. I want them to have a sense of well-being that doesn’t depend on me personally — a favor I return. We rely on our systems to be stable and secure, which frees us all up to do our best work.

If someone doesn’t feel safe in their work or in their life, I can’t fix that. Often, such a person doesn’t trust the systems, so they do things like follow up to make sure you got an email or double-check the thing that someone else was responsible for checking. They are worried about getting things wrong, so they add steps to the process and wait for decisions to be re-confirmed. Over time, their anxiety adds more work, compromises the systems, and increases stress for others.

I don’t see this problem talked about much, but the contagious hassle brought on by overachieving and approval-seeking is an insidious productivity-killer, time waster, and energy drain for everyone involved. I hope that by highlighting it, I can begin a conversation about it and potentially help individuals and organizations to let go of these habits and patterns.

Have you seen this phenomenon in your own work or elsewhere? How have you dealt with it?