“It’s Fine. I Can Handle It.”
Early in my career, I was the team lead for a pool of Administrative Assistants who supported the Communications Executives on our floor.
Over a relatively short period, several members of our team left for different reasons (maternity leave, retirement, and involuntary severance).
But instead of replacing those resources, leadership decided to redistribute their workload among the rest of us.
And I wanted to be a good leader.
I wanted to set an example for my team.
I wasn’t going to ask them to absorb a ridiculous amount of additional work while I sat back and protected my own capacity.
So I took the lion’s share.
It was fine.
I could handle it.
Bring it on.
And for a while, I did handle it.
Until “handling it” meant I was operating at approximately 150% of my capacity.
I started coming in earlier.
Staying later.
Skipping lunch.
Taking work home.
I was exhausted on the weekends.
I started forgetting things and making mistakes.
And I became increasingly irritated and lost patience with people.
But the work still needed to get done.
So I kept going.
I Was Trying to Prove I Was Ready for More
There was another layer to what was happening that made this situation even more complicated.
At the time, I didn’t want to be an Administrative Assistant forever.
I was interested in project management, so I had voluntarily taken on some project management responsibilities as part of my career development.
I wanted experience.
I wanted exposure.
And, if I’m being completely transparent, I wanted to prove that I could do it.
So, while I absorbed more and more of my team’s administrative workload, I also took on additional responsibilities designed to help me advance my career.
I thought I was demonstrating what I was capable of.
And eventually, I did demonstrate something.
Just not what I intended.
Something Had to Give
The strain started showing up in the way I communicated with people.
I was short.
I was impatient.
And eventually, I was written up for unprofessional behavior in my communication.
I was terrified.
I thought I was going to lose my job.
Here I was, trying so hard to prove that I was capable, dependable, and ready for more responsibility, and suddenly I was afraid I might lose everything I had worked so hard to build.
Something had to change.
I had to reduce my workload.
And some of the responsibilities I had to give up were the project management responsibilities I had voluntarily taken on to help me develop my career.
That was the irony of the whole situation.
I took on more and more work because I wanted to demonstrate my leadership abilities and prove I was capable of moving into something bigger.
But I took on so much that my performance suffered.
And ultimately, I had to give up some of the very work that was helping me get where I wanted to go.
My attempt to prove that I could handle more was now threatening the career I was trying so hard to build.
When Being Capable Becomes Something We Have to Prove
There is nothing wrong with being ambitious.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be known as dependable, capable, hardworking, or someone who can be counted on.
Those qualities can serve us incredibly well in our careers.
But for some of us, being capable can become more than something we are.
It can become something we feel we constantly have to prove.
So when someone needs help, we step in.
When there’s a gap, we fill it.
When the workload increases, we absorb it.
When someone asks if we can take on one more thing:
Sure.
It’s fine.
I can handle it.
And sometimes we can.
That’s what makes this pattern so difficult to recognize.
Because many of us became exceptionally good at handling things.
We learned how to keep going when we were tired.
How to figure things out without asking for help.
How to carry responsibilities that probably shouldn’t have been ours in the first place.
How to remain useful.
How to be the dependable one.
Those adaptations may have served us long before we ever entered the workplace.
And then we built careers with them.
The Career Advice Isn’t Necessarily Wrong
We’re often told that if we want to advance our careers, we should take initiative.
Go above and beyond.
Volunteer for stretch assignments.
Demonstrate that we’re capable of operating at the next level.
Make ourselves indispensable.
I followed that advice.
The problem wasn’t that I took initiative.
The problem was that I didn’t know where initiative ended and overfunctioning began.
There was no internal stopping point that said:
Cyndi, you don’t have to prove your capability by carrying all of this.
Instead, every additional responsibility became another opportunity to demonstrate my value.
Until my capacity made the decision for me.
Being Seen Doesn’t Require Us to Carry Everything
I used to think that being seen as capable meant showing people how much I could handle.
I see it differently now.
There is a difference between expanding our capacity and consistently exceeding it.
There is a difference between taking on a stretch assignment and stretching ourselves so thin that we can no longer do our best work.
And there is a difference between demonstrating leadership and protecting everyone else from the consequences of an unsustainable situation.
Sometimes leadership is stepping in.
Sometimes leadership is saying:
This isn’t sustainable.
Because when we continually absorb the extra work, solve the problem, stay late, skip lunch, and somehow get everything done, the people around us may never see the problem.
They only see that the work got done.
We know what it cost us.
They don’t.
And eventually, that cost can show up in our careers in ways we never intended.
I learned that lesson the hard way.
I was trying so hard to show everyone that I was ready for more that I lost some of the “more” that actually mattered to me.
So maybe the question isn’t:
“How much can I handle?”
Maybe a more useful question is:
“What am I carrying because it genuinely moves me toward the career I want, and what am I carrying because I still feel like I have something to prove?”
I’d love to hear what this brings up for you.
Have you ever taken on so much trying to prove that you could handle it that it started costing you something you actually wanted?
Hit reply and tell me. I’m genuinely curious about what “I can handle it” has looked like in our careers.