How to stop over-volunteering

You’re a woman, not a pack horse

We’ve just returned from an epic week in Queenstown, hanging with Alpacas, helicopters, epic humans and Brad Pitt – he followed us there.

At one stage, we found ourselves on a farm running one of our most popular mini-masterclasses: How to Say ‘No’. The conversation inevitably turned to how often women volunteer for non-promotable work (office housework, note taking, dishwasher stacking, etc) without being asked. 

This form of self-sabotage is so common that we got curious about why we do it.

We measure our worth by the weight we carry

We’re running with a working theory here. Help us out by answering these two questions:

1. When you think about women you admire, how often do you remark on their ability to ‘do it all’?
2. Now, think about how often you use those words to describe successful men.

Notice a difference? While we admire men who’ve made an impact, we admire women based on the load they can carry. Too many of us measure our own worth by it, too:

We wear our ability to ‘multitask’ like a badge of honour while our brains exhaust themselves with endless context-switching. 

We take pride in our ability to do everything ourselves and limit our achievements to only those that can be completed on our own.

We put our hands up for all sorts of things we don’t want to do because we feel compelled to contribute – even when we’re running on empty.

Quirky categorisation

If you’ve ever completed Harvard’s Career-Gender Implicit Association Test, you know that unconscious bias doesn’t just impact how we see other groups; it also shapes how we see ourselves. As a childfree professional who avoids cooking, Nat still uncovered a slight bias towards women’s role as homemakers. 😅

If you found the same, don’t worry. Bias is a normal and necessary categorisation tool that helps our brains make sense of the endless avalanche of information we consume. However, social programming can make those categories slightly wonky, and many of us are guilty of categorising women alongside pack horses. 

We do it with the best intentions. It really is quite astounding just how much women can bear – often while battling hot flashes, headaches and hormonal imbalances. However, as with most things, admiration can quickly turn into expectation, and that may be where we’ve gone a little awry.

Welcome to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

Whenever we run our ‘Saying No’ workshop, we wind up with a list of outrageous things that busy women have volunteered to do. From organising social events to picking up office admin, to buying gifts for mother-in-laws, these are tasks we tend to take on without anyone asking. 

This shared compulsion was best summarised by one comment: ‘No one else volunteered to do it, so I had to’. Our response? If no one else volunteered, perhaps it’s not that important.

So, this is your opportunity to apply the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon to unnecessary volunteering. The Baader-what phenomenon? Well, it’s another trick our brains use: when you’ve recently learned or noticed something (like a yellow car), it suddenly seems to appear everywhere. We guarantee that now that you’ve been made aware of how often we unnecessarily volunteer, you’ll see it all the time. 

You might hear about an incredible entrepreneur who succeeded through great personal sacrifice – leaving his family for months. Instead of feeling inspired, you’ll wonder who volunteered to look after the kids. Or, you’ll have to switch off a doco about an ultramarathoner because you feel too uncomfortable watching his heavily pregnant wife juggling young kids and support crewing. What about when you see mums carrying kids and belongings while their husbands wander hand (and responsibility) free? 

The thing is, it’s likely that no one told these women to carry an unfair load. They just picked it up.

Volun-don’t

Spotting our tendency to over-volunteer is the first step; doing nothing is the second.

Yes, we’re taking a break from our usual action-focused philosophy to ask you to stop this week. Stop putting your hand up, offering, and equating your value to the load you carry. 

Women aren’t pack horses; we are valuable leaders with more important sh*t to do. Let’s get out from under the weight of tasks we volunteer to take on and get back to making an impact.
If you spend the first block on refining your meetings, we’re confident the investment will reward you with an immediate return.