Are you unable to step away from work until every task is checked off your to-do list and every email answered? Do you often think, “I have all these things to do and I can’t get any one of them DONE.”? This relentless drive may be more than dedication. It could be Completion Anxiety (CA).
What Is CA?
Completion Anxiety is the persistent fear of not finishing tasks or not meeting set standards. It causes stress and impedes your productivity.
What Does It Feel Like?
- Overwhelmed: You feel swamped by your number of tasks or nervous about your incomplete work.
- Restless: Not completing every item on your daily to-do list makes you irritable at the end of the day.
- Sick: You get frequent headaches at work or at lunch time you realize you’ve been clenching your muscles all morning.
- Unfocused: You can’t concentrate on the task in front of you because you’re worried about all your other unfinished tasks. You are too paralyzed to do anything so you procrastinate.
- Perfectionistic: You’re afraid your work is subpar so you try again, but striving for perfection results in missed deadlines.
- Dodgy: You avoid tasks that give you stress but the unfinished work doesn’t go away it just accumulates.
- Exhausted: The constant pressure you put on yourself to finish projects leaves you burned out and unmotivated.
- Tense: Every ding of an email notification stresses you out because you’re nervous you either won’t respond promptly enough or it means another task has been added to your to-do list.
What Can You Do About It?
- Confine: Define specific work hours and stick to them. At some point during the last half of your workday, identify tasks that can wait until the next workday. Striving for completion is commendable, but not at the expense of your well-being.
- Prioritize: Which tasks are urgent? Which tasks are important? Work a lot on completing the urgent and a little on the important. Schedule time on your calendar to work more on the important later in the week.
- Good Enough: Done is better than perfect. Remind yourself perfection isn’t always necessary. Shift your focus from getting every detail absolutely right to making steady progress toward delivering a competent and sufficient result.
- Divide: Breaking tasks into smaller steps makes them more manageable and less daunting. Take breaks between completing one step and starting the next.
- Celebrate: Recognize your achievements. Acknowledging your completed tasks builds confidence and reduces anxiety. The celebration can be as small as moving a task from your to-do list to your is-done list.
- Limit: Allocate specific timeframes to each task to prevent overextending yourself. Sometimes you stare at a project for so long it stops making sense and you doubt yourself. Save your work and come back to it a little later with fresh eyes.
- Feedback: Get your work to a minimum viable product then get your manager’s input. This should help reduce your tendency to overwork. Your manager decides when a task meets the required standards. If your work gives them all they need, move on to the next project. If not, clarify what else needs done and keep working on it.
How do you combat Completion Anxiety? Please share in the comments.