On overpreparing
Learning to trust ourselves
I took last week as holiday and after just one day of meetings, I regret putting my to-do list to one side. The preparation I need to do for the group coaching programme I’m facilitating later this week, looms.
One of the things I enjoy about my one-to-one coaching work is that there’s nothing to prepare. It’s about being in the moment, tuned into the person in front of me. My clients don’t email me ahead with an agenda. If they do, it’s to help them organise their thoughts, not mine.
Group work that has a predefined structure, particularly if I didn’t design it, takes up a disproportionate amount of my energy in the lead up. I start to fear ‘getting it wrong.’
As a girl, it was my unwavering commitment to the avoidance of failure that drove me to succeed. The resultant overpreparation for every test and exam, regardless of their significance, led to a string of impressive results. Prospering in the academic system was more about outwitting the examiners with relentless past paper practice and impeccable fact recall, than demonstrating transferable skills.
It didn’t feel much different at work. I remember one presentation, to the board of my last full-time employer. I wrote detailed speaker notes and filmed myself practicing with my colour-coded index cards balanced on a music stand. I watched the footage back and critiqued how I had performed, cutting out the sections that didn’t flow, and noting how my voice needed more inflection. I wrote down every possible question they might ask, and mind-mapped outline answers.
When it came to interviews, I had a lever arch file organised with dividers, which I added to each time I went for a promotion. I created an accompanying spreadsheet and plotted out the best examples for each potential question. I made crib sheets, structuring my answers to make it easy for the interviewer to tick their boxes. I researched the role, the team, and the latest news about the industry to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that I was the best fit for the job.
But I’m not sure I was ever really a fit. I was just good at pretending I was and controlling the outcomes I thought I wanted. I built a life that distracted me from my growing unease. The resulting financial pressure drove me to keep going. I had to. Not doing so just wasn’t an option.
As well as feeling permanently exhausted, relying on overpreparation had me forget how to trust myself. I was so well-practiced at cramming and swotting and considering all possible angles, I forgot that my ability to respond in the moment was there at all.
This week, on the eve of the group coaching call, after overthinking it far too much, I decided to remove the possibility of my preparation consuming the entire day. I prioritised other work, and a long walk, and limited my prep time to a couple of hours in the afternoon.
The next day, when I met with the women in the group, I remembered why I love group coaching. It felt as though me and those women were dancing together. The structure of the session was the music, and I responded to the moves they brought to the dancefloor. The connection between them, their exploration, their support of one another, was beautiful to witness.
Sometimes I feel as though I am having to learn what I need to thrive from scratch. I get frustrated that nobody taught me the importance of letting go, sooner. I rage against how hard the unlearning process is and criticize myself for falling into the same patterns, when I should know better.
I began writing this on Tuesday in my plight to get ahead of myself. Today is Friday and I have re-written almost the entire piece. I should have delayed sitting at my laptop and trusted I would know what to write.
Perhaps what is truer is that the first draft was required, to create this one. Perhaps, when it comes to unlearning, we need to acknowledge and appreciate what came before, to find the places and ways of being we most enjoy inhabiting. None of it is wrong. It all has value. And there is no shortcut through any of it. All we can do is experiment and trust that the sweet spot is there, waiting for us to stumble across it.
Thank you for being here.
With love,
Claire
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