Keeping End-of-year Hysteria in Check

A recent post on the Harvard Business Review blog talked about how to ask for direction from managers and others in dealing with work overload (see below). This reminded me of a kind of hysteria I sense in so many managers about "year end", seeing how so many are all postponing meetings, commitments, social gatherings and what not. It is as if the "year end" is "life's end", a sense of hysteria totally blown out of proportion. Of course it all comes from above, the manager on top and the one on top of him/her. And we all know that is comes from the fear of not succeeding, not meeting the numbers and so on.

With all due respect to those many people who need deadlines and guns at their heads to get things done, I think there is too much respect given here…we need to remember that important things are achieved by building structures, systems, relationships and discipline over time- let's keep this impulsive hysteria in check so that we don't find ourselves letting it lead us, rather than us lead it…

Rome was not built in a day and neither was the company you work for. Beware that end of the year hysteria may be getting the better of you and causing others to lose confidence in you as a person in a relationship. That, to my eyes, is much more important.

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(Harvard Business Review blog)

December 12, 2013

Ask for Direction with Work Overload

No matter how effective you are, you can’t fit 100 hours of work into 40 or even 60 hours a week. Rather than letting a vague sense of fear drive your decisions, take an objective approach. Gather your facts: a concise list of projects, an estimate of how long each task will take, and a visual to show the incongruence between the available time and the requested activities. This visual can be as simple as a printout of your weekly calendar or as complex as a full-scale project plan. Then ask for a strategic planning session with the people who are asking for the most work from you. Discuss which tasks might be delegated or simplified so that you can invest more time in the highest priorities. When done in this manner, asking for direction can lead to a joint effort to prioritize and work within the reality of your schedule.

Adapted from “Stop Work Overload By Setting These Boundaries” by Elizabeth Grace Saunders.