Workplace Overachievers Need to Work on Attitude Adjustment

“How’m I doin’?” New York’s irrepressible former mayor, Ed Koch, constantly asked voters.

For an elected official, the question is a reality check. But if you need to keep asking it where you work, though, you may be a chronic overachiever, “not a happy camper,” psychologist Robert Arkin says.

Not content just to do his or her job, the bona fide overachiever “has a need to expend tremendous amounts of effort, perhaps heroic effort,” to do a task that might not even call for it, the Ohio State University psychologist said.

Not surprisingly, overachievers “have a high burnout rate and are prone to nervous breakdowns, hospitalizations and collapsing, perhaps even in the workplace settings,” Arkin noted. In one extreme case, he recalled, a perfectly competent colleague who persistently doubted his talents killed himself by leaping from a high building.

“Overachievers have the fantasy ideation of escaping, and in the most extreme case this would be suicide,” he explained.

Overachievers are not to be confused with high achievers. There’s a huge difference. High achievers like their jobs and enjoy plucking the fruits of success. They tend to whistle while they work.

High achievers “try pretty hard and do pretty well,” Arkin said. They attribute their results to their talents and abilities, though, not to the amount of time and effort lavished on a project.

By contrast, overachievers suffer from “a tremendous feeling of self-doubt about their abilities, coupled with a strong need to prove themselves,” Arkin said.

For the most part, overachievers do succeed. When they fail, though, they feel “more depressed and stupid” than their co-workers and are anxious and apprehensive about others’ opinions of them.

“The most psychologically healthy person is the one who is trying pretty hard and doing pretty well, not the individual who is trying heroically or, for that matter, the individual who has withdrawn effort completely [the underachiever],” Arkin said.

The psychologist based his views on interviews and experiments conducted with thousands of Ohio collegians over a two-year span. Students who scored very high on tests gauging the need for success, they noticed, also scored high on a self-doubt scale.

“They [overachievers] measured success by extrinsic considerations,” Arkin said. “They needed trophies, grades, promotions, [and] salary raises.”

Red flags should drop if you recognize that (a) you’re more focused on the outward signs of success than the pleasures of achieving it; (b) if you feel you’re working to measure your self-worth instead of to achieve an outcome; and (c) if you’re working so hard that everything else in life--family, hobbies, social life, games--fades from view.

To break the overachiever cycle, Arkin recommended that instead of continually asking “How good am I?” rephrase the question to “How well did I do last time?” and “How well will I do next time?”

This will knock the issue of self-doubt out of the equation.

“Rethinking the meaning of hard work is key,” Arkin said. “Focusing on ‘How good am I?’ inspires worries about natural talents, and questioning self-worth isn’t what makes people productive or happy in the workplace.”

Managers can help overachievers by asking them to rethink the way they go about their work.

“The manager should say, ‘Hit the high goals but have fun while you do it,’ ” Arkin advised.

A savvy manager might add, “If you don’t make it, it may not be a reflection on you. Maybe we set the goals too high.”