Are you an overachiever?

(and is that a good thing?)

What is an Overachiever Anyway?

The phrase has always stirred up negative connotations for me. I’ve always seen it as a negative, like I can imagine myself saying “They are such a fucking over-achiever” when talking about someone who is really good at lots of things…but sort of knows it and wants other people to know it too.

And I never used to describe myself as an over-achiever, until quite recently. But we’ll get to that.

Anyway, today, I spent a little while thinking about it and looking into it. That, admittedly sounds a bit more grandiose than “I Googled it”….which is what I actually did.

And the definition is sort of surprising to me:

Now, unless I’m mis-reading this, the definition of an overachiever is basically anybody who is above average. Right? If you are more successful than the standard or expected level, then (by definition) you’re an overachiever.

But surely “the standard or expected level” is the average or the mean, no?

So if you’re above average, you’re an overachiever.

I think the context in which we (or certainly I) tend to think of someone as an overachiever is someone who is above average at an above average number of things.

So, for argument’s sake, let’s say some people are good at music, some are good at art, some are good at sport and so on. The notion of “overachiever” that I subscribe to is somebody who is above average at more than most people at more things (here someone who is above average at music and art and sport).

Does this interpretation make sense to you?

Jack of All Trades

It’s hard to think (or talk) about being “good” at a lot of things without talking about the Jack of All Trades concept.

My first recollection of hearing this expression, or at least being described as one, was in relation to music. When I was a teenager I played the guitar, piano and drums. I wasn’t great at the guitar (but could still play the basic chords and could therefore play most basic songs in a basic way), I was very good at piano and I was quite good at the drums. I was also very good at the recording/technology side of things.

But I wasn’t great at any of them. Comparing me to most of my friends or band mates, they were usually better at their main instrument than I was, but I was better at the others.

So, in our band:

• Colin & Stephen - Way better at guitar than me (like way better)

• Me - Better at drums and piano than them (neither played drums at all) and much better at the technical recording/producing/computer side of music.

Master of None

The “problem” with being described as a Jack of All Trades, of course, is the kicker:

Master of None.

And this becomes very important when a polymath/multipotentialite thinks about their potential.

Sticking with the music example, if I had spent all my time practicing and playing just one instrument (say the drums) and never picked up a guitar or touched a piano, instead spending that time playing only the drums, how much better at the drums would have been?

It’s really a time/resources allocation issue.

I effectively spread myself too thinly and ended up just ok at everything.

Now, granted my versions of “just ok” is still better than the average, because I can still play the drums, piano and guitar better than most people on average, who either don’t play any instrument, or just play one. But once I’m compared one on one with anybody who just plays one of those instruments, they are almost always likely to be way way better than me at that instrument.

And the deeper you get into specialisation, the more obvious this becomes.

The Over Achieving Teenager (me)

Sticking with my example, as a teenager I was:

• Music

  • Drummer in an indie band,

  • Drummer in the school band

  • Doing Grade 8 Piano Exams

  • Writing electronic/Dance Music

• Education

  • Intellectually smarty enough and working hard in school to do well enough in school to to go Trinity College to study Law (even though I didn’t want to….that’s another day’s post).

• Radio

  • Doing a radio show on a pirate radio station a few days a week (I used to cycle up to the station in my uniform after school on a Wednesday and do a two hour show, for example, instead of studying).

• Sport

  • I was good at every sport I ever played (again, better than average at all). I would later discover that I am not good at Ice Skating or Skiing….but figured that I would be good at them if I spent more time doing them.

A lot of my peers in each niche were doing just that thing. So their focus was either on school, or music, or radio or sport. There weren’t that many who did all four and kept all the balls in the air and were quite good (not great, admittedly) at all of them.

Most of the time I don’t regret having all those interests and passions and spreading my time across them all.

But sometimes I do wonder how good could I have been (at any of them) if I had just picked one, let go of the rest and poured all my time and energy into that one thing.

My Maths Problem (aka my ego problem)

It’s very hard for me to concede that I’m not good that things.

But I’m not good at maths.

Basic maths (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) I am good at, but algebra, trigonometry and all that jazz, not for me.

But when I was 17/18 I couldn’t come to terms with being bad at it. Up to that point in my life, I had been good at everything I had ever done and it all came pretty naturally to me.

But maths for the leaving certificate (the final exams before university/college in Ireland, typically done when you’re about 18) was a challenge.

My response was to double down and to spend a disproportionate amount of my time studying maths and trying to get good at it.

What I should have done was admit it wasn’t for me and drop down to “pass” level maths instead of doing “honours” level maths.

If I had spent the time I spent trying to get good at maths on my other subjects I could have done much better than that.

Again, I spread my time and my resources wrong trying to be good at everything and the affect was to bring my average down across everything. I ended up getting a (quite respectable) B in maths, but I didn’t get as good grades in the subjects that I was naturally good at (History, for example) as I easily could have.

The “Curse” of the Over Achiever

I like to think that if I went back and did my leaving cert again now knowing what I know now, I would drop down to pass maths. But do you know what, I’m not so such I would.

I’d imagine that my solution would be to try and be more productive and to try and manage my time and resources better.

I think we (multipotentialiates/polymaths/jack of all trades/generalists) just find it too hard to give up on something. We genuinely have this little voice in the back of our heads that makes us think we can be good at anything, if we can just figure out how to find more time to dedicate to it.

Effectively, we’re delusional….to the point where we don’t realise we’re delusional.

Like I’m not delusional, those other over-achievers are, obvs.

And those delusional fools (again, not me) spend a lot of time day dreaming about how could they could have been (at any of them) if they had picked just one “thing”, let go of the rest and poured all their time and energy into that one thing.

And that’s a double edge sword:

1. You can always hide behind the fact that you’re good at lots of things as being the excuse/reason you’re not great at anything; but

2. You are always left with a weird unanswered sense of “what if” and a feeling like you could have been “better” than you are (at something) and maybe had a different life or different experience or different career.