I had a client, Sarah, come to me a few months ago with a pretty tricky issue.

She told me that she had way too much going on at work. She had 10 plates spinning, and she was struggling to keep them all in the air. And yet, she continued to say yes to projects. She was living in a constant state of overcommitment.

As a result, she had no time for herself. She was aging prematurely and her health was suffering. She was starting to feel pretty fed up, too. Like many of us, she was thinking “Shouldn’t it be getting easier to manage my commitments as I get more successful? Why is it just getting harder?”

Sarah is more the rule than the exception. Did you know the United States is the only industrialized country in the world without a legal maximum amount of hours you can work per week? On average, professionals work enough hours a week to equal an entire extra work day!

As a professional productivity coach, I see this problem time and time again with my new clients.

Sarah needed something to change. But the truth about overcommitment is hard to hear. We’re taught to be “yes men” from a very young age. It should be no surprise that some of the most successful people are chronically overcommitted — it’s what we’ve been raised to do!

This is only compounded by the fact that in today’s knowledge economy, it’s become a lot harder to see our results right away. We aren’t factory workers with a product quota of the day. Our success is based on how much our boss likes us and how much we’re getting paid.

But constantly saying yes to everything isn’t pushing us forward. In fact, it’s keeping you from growing, fast-tracking you to burnout and reinforcing a slough of mindset issues.