What happens when you fix everyone else’s problems
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You don’t just like things done well.
You like them done right.
Your way. On time. With proper references and perfectly indented bullet points.
And so, without noticing, you start running everyone else’s life as well as your own. Being the person who keeps everything running, anticipates every need, and quietly stops things from falling apart.
In Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, there’s this great analogy:
“It’s as if your neighbour never waters his lawn. But every time you turn on your sprinkler, it falls on his yard. Your grass is dying, but his looks great. If you’d fix the sprinkler system so the water fell on your own lawn, a little boundary clarification would do the trick.”
So many of us women in academia are forever watering someone else’s lawn.
We take responsibility for things that were never ours, because women are taught that keeping everyone else OK is part of being competent.
It shows up everywhere:
soothing a PhD student’s anxiety and micro-managing instead of letting them learn that uncertainty is part of the process
checking on colleagues because you’re sure they’ll drop the ball
pre-emptively chasing admin because you think they’ll forget
editing whole papers instead of giving feedback
running a wellbeing workshop during your annual leave
creating a Teams channel called “Admin Reminders” and then being the only one posting in it.
It looks like kindness.
But it’s actually a control-freak impulse in disguise — a perfectionistic lack of trust that others can look after themselves.
The other problem is that it leaves you depleted. You end up over-functioning for everyone else and under-functioning for yourself. Exhausted, behind, and quietly resentful.
The solution:
The work isn’t to care less. It’s to care within your fence line.
You can be supportive without rescuing.
Start by noticing the urge to step in. That urge isn’t responsibility — it’s anxiety. Pause before you act and ask three questions:
Is this actually mine to fix?
What would happen if I trusted them to handle it?
What needs watering in my garden right now?
When you start practising this, you reclaim the energy you’ve been leaking into everyone else’s projects, emotions, and crises. You stop managing adults like children and start trusting that they water their own garden.
The result
More calm, more focus, and a sense that your energy finally goes where it belongs — on your own damn lawn.
