Do you self-identify as doing the most?
Let us help you do less
Hi!
This week our small team welcomes a new member… we’re thrilled that Rebecca Prusinowski is joining us! She’s worked on a ton of cool stuff and also has a very cute dog. Those two facts aren’t equally important but… it’s close. You’ll be hearing from her in one of these emails sometime soon.
In the meantime, today we’ve got an essay about the pervasive instinct to… do the most. It’s not an instinct that I myself necessarily feel swayed by, but, without naming names, we certainly do have some self-professed overachievers on our team. And this might be excitement about our new teammate talking here, but it did make me think about the importance of balance in a collaborative group. You need the one who sweats the details, striving for perfection, but equally important is the one who reminds everyone to not let “perfect be the enemy of the good.” Ahem.
Friend of Prism Xiomara Bovell is what you might call a reformed “doing the most-er,” and she recounts that pilates-fueled journey below. I personally learned what Lagree Method was from this essay, and while I shan’t be trying it myself, I’m happy to know what it is!
Yours in imperfection,
Jocelyn
Xiomara is jack-of-all-trades, master of some, who has spent chapters of life as a dancer, a creative strategist and, for a few years, a boutique fitness instructor. She writes about arts, culture, and performance in her substack Live Cultures, and hosts bi-monthly community field trips to see live performances in NYC.
One thing that makes Xiomara feel well: sunshine and no agenda.
I can do it all… I just don’t want to anymore
If nothing else, I try hard. I don’t dabble, I dive—into new languages, careers, artistic pursuits, personal projects (#renaissancewoman or first-born, Virgo, AND eldest daughter of immigrants, you decide).
In 2019, after months of intrigue around the contraptions (which I now know to be megaformers) neatly lined up in the studio I passed on my commute, I decided to try Lagree—the high-intensity cousin of Pilates. It’s faster, heavier, and designed to make you suffer a little. The first class was certainly… humbling (the instructor was also kind of an asshole, but I digress). But despite the slow start, I knew that once I got familiar with the technique and language of Lagree I’d be in my element and that instructor could eat his snarky little words. As a late starter in ballet, I’d mastered the art of being the dark horse, and before long I was Lagree-literate, fluently transitioning between moves, adding challenging variations, and earning shoutouts from the instructors. In just 50 minutes, I would work every muscle in my body (even ones I didn’t know I had); sweating, shaking and internally crying, beneath the altar of a "Better Sore Than Sorry" wall decal. The 1:1 correlation between my effort on the megaformer and results I could see and feel made the mantra that hard work pays off actually feel true.
For me, overachievement is a reflex. If I’m going to do something, it’s ain't no mountain high enough—I’ll take things to the hardest, biggest, furthest degree possible (…often flirting a little too closely with the edge of burnout valley). So naturally, I didn’t just do Lagree—I set out to master it. An online application form turned into a one week bootcamp, followed by 12 weeks of intensive instructor training. I was teaching free classes alongside my full-time 9-5, juggling pitches and strategy proposals with playlists and routine plans. My training odyssey culminated in three rounds of audition classes with a room full of clients, closely examined by “master instructors” for whom I’d need to flawlessly demonstrate efficient routine sequencing, musicality, charisma, and client rapport to make the cut. It was A LOT, but I made it.
In hindsight, I’m not sure why I started teaching (though it makes for a solid subtle-flex “fun fact” at corporate icebreakers). I didn’t want a fitness career. I had a job I liked and a plethora of other hobbies. If I’m honest, I think I just wanted to prove that I could. And so, I did.
The rush of accelerating from beginner to expert excited me. I was adding a new descriptor to my growing chain of multi-hyphenate qualities, like Pac-Man gobbling up golden nuggets. I had now earned the authority (and responsibility) to guide my clients on their own journeys, to push them when their own willpower faltered. But I hadn’t anticipated the weight of the role: the hours spent programming playlists, designing sequences, being the cheerleader in the room even when I was tired, burnt-out, or battling Sunday scaries ahead of the work week. I had turned a curiosity into an obligation. After two years, I was clocking in more out of duty than desire, foregoing spontaneous hangouts, and playing calendar Tetris to align vacations with our instructor absence policy. I had set out to prove I could do it—and once I had, I realized (albeit belatedly) that I no longer wanted to. It was time to quit (admittedly, something I am not very good at).
As I slowed down and found myself doing less, the question arose: all that effort—hundreds (maybe even thousands) of hours mastering Lagree technique—for what? Sure, I could do many difficult things and persevere through intense challenges. But then again, I live a civilian life. I’m not training for the Marines. Nobody—except myself—asked for this! Whyyy??
I was raised to understand that the world was both my oyster and my worst enemy, but that with enough grit the latter could be vanquished. Acutely aware of the ways the world might overlook me—as a woman, a Black woman, a daughter of immigrants—will and effort were my superpowers against underestimation. Instead of I bet she can’t…, I made sure the narrative became What can’t she do?
The reality is: the will to persevere (and outperform), when wielded indiscriminately, is exhausting. I think I have sufficient evidence that I can do anything I set my mind to, as prophesied by my “pro-girl power” all-girls school. The more important question is whether I want to be pursuing yet another endeavor.
I don’t regret the time and effort I spent in any of my pursuits. Embracing intensity has afforded me a wider vocabulary of movement, knowledge, sensation; but if intensity is akin to speaking IN ALL CAPS, I’m learning to embrace a more punctuated existence–one that allows for breaths and pauses, as well as exclamation and speed. I don’t need to lead with my most intense self all the time, but I know she’s there should I need her.
At the beginning of the year, I set the intention to be obligation-less: no places I needed to be or things I had to do. Just unstructured free time. Four months in, I committed to a 12-week ceramics course. But for once, I’m just dabbling (I promise!). I have no intentions of diving into a career as a professional ceramicist, I just want a few fun ice cream bowls.
FOLLOW XIOMARA ON:
Do you default to doing the most?
Sometimes it’s hard to examine our motives behind the things we do: As Xiomara lays out, sometimes you think you’re doing something for yourself, but further inspection (or retrospection) reveals you’re doing it just to prove you can. And that’s not the worst thing, per se, but it’s worth examining the instinct. If you derive genuine joy from prepping your kid’s elaborate bento box lunches, go for it; but if you’re doing it for bragging rights… maybe throw in a good old PB&J once in a while.
Here are a few tips to treat a case of Default Doing the Most (DDTM).
Resist the impulse to monetize your hobbies, at least at first.
Read Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing for a crash course on finding value in doing nothing.
Or read Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which might seem like it’s strictly about productivity but is actually a useful tool in examining how you’re spending your time.
Try Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which helps build a muscle of awareness to begin noticing when your body is telling you you're doing too much. Ciara attests to this eight week course (it’s free, straightforward, and internet 1.0 in the best way).
If you identify as suffering from DDTM, let us know the things that remind you to ease up once in a while. Someone on our team (won’t name names) would appreciate it.
Humbled 🥲
Hope your Sunday is more comma than ALL CAPS.