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There’s just a certain point in your career where you have way too much to do and you realize you’ll never get it all done. I have a zillion things in my person

There’s just a certain point in your career where you have way too much to do and you realize you’ll never get it all done. I have a zillion things in my personal backlog, and I just accept that some of them won’t get done. I’m always going to be disappointing someone. Besides, a person’s disappointment stems from their own expectations going unmet, not your competency. Frequently those expectations weren’t reasonable in the first place.

myself248 5y ago
Sure, because pretty much by definition, if they asked you to do a thing because they weren't competent to do it themselves, they also weren't competent to assess the reasonbleness of the request. This seems obvious when I say it this way, but internally my mind is exploding right now...
- conductr 5y ago
  I don’t find competencies to be a factor at all. I suppose if you’re being asked to do something by a peer, it could be something they are not good at. But that’s just teamwork 101. It’s just as likely I may ask them for help on something i know I’m not the best at. Most of this stuff comes from other departments/functions or just higher up the org chart. Everyone in an organization has their lane, and it would be out of place for someone do something too deep in another person’s/team’s area of expertise. For example, I’m in corp finance. Everyone in the company comes to me for financial analysis. It’s not that they are necessarily unfamiliar with spreadsheets or building some rather simple analysis. Many of them have MBAs, etc of which Finance was a major component. It’s that my team is the default go to for all things financial.
conductr 5y ago
> Frequently those expectations weren’t reasonable in the first place Even when reasonable, they often lack context as to competing priorities. So they just expect, until you tell them there are higher priority items. At that point, there can be discussion about priorities if necessary.

myself248 5y ago

Sure, because pretty much by definition, if they asked you to do a thing because they weren't competent to do it themselves, they also weren't competent to assess the reasonbleness of the request. This seems obvious when I say it this way, but internally my mind is exploding right now...

conductr 5y ago
I don’t find competencies to be a factor at all. I suppose if you’re being asked to do something by a peer, it could be something they are not good at. But that’s just teamwork 101. It’s just as likely I may ask them for help on something i know I’m not the best at. Most of this stuff comes from other departments/functions or just higher up the org chart. Everyone in an organization has their lane, and it would be out of place for someone do something too deep in another person’s/team’s area of expertise. For example, I’m in corp finance. Everyone in the company comes to me for financial analysis. It’s not that they are necessarily unfamiliar with spreadsheets or building some rather simple analysis. Many of them have MBAs, etc of which Finance was a major component. It’s that my team is the default go to for all things financial.

conductr 5y ago

> Frequently those expectations weren’t reasonable in the first place Even when reasonable, they often lack context as to competing priorities. So they just expect, until you tell them there are higher priority items. At that point, there can be discussion about priorities if necessary.