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When your manager brings you new work and you’re already swamped with work try asking this question: “I have these X other high-priority items on my plate. Whic
by bluejekyll 4y ago
When your manager brings you new work and you’re already swamped with work try asking this question: “I have these X other high-priority items on my plate. Which of these would you like me to deprioritize in order to work on this new thing?” Then set expectations on when you think you can get to that new thing, also, it can be helpful to offer reasons why you believe certain things are higher priority. Prioritizing work is important when your feeling like there is too much.
Change the conversation from how much to when.
- ryandrake 4y ago> Which of these would you like me to deprioritize in order to work on this new thing?” At most places, the answer is going to be “you need to prioritize all of it. Oh, and by the way, here is even more work to put on your plate!”
- LargeWu 4y agoThere are occasionally times when everything is critical. Often this is in the early stages of survival for a company. If this is a chronic problem, or it's an established company, though, you realistically have two solutions that don't lead to burnout: 1. Don't deliver everything you're asked for 2. Find a new job Once that culture is established it's extremely hard to change. It certainly will not fix itself.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoI agree completely. I was working for a company that had been around for over 20 years and when that happened, I did both 1&2. It was pretty clear that I had made all the improvements I could there and that nothing would get any better.
- Aeolun 4y agoI think my answer to that is something of the kind of: “Work is going to be prioritized one way or another. If you don’t tell me which one you want me to work on first I’ll pick the one I like best, and we’ll see which of the problems never gets finished.” I think this only works if you’ve already set boundaries on your time though.
- visarga 4y agoI usually work on the latest task, last-in-first-out system. If someone has a higher priority they should bug be more to get bumped up. The reason is that I want to finish at least a few tasks without delays. For large tasks I ask them to select the ordering.
- RalfWausE 4y agoI worked at a company like this (for f...ing 10 years!), beeing fired at the end was the best thing that could happen to me, it lead me to a much less stressfull job with much better pay
- johnnylambada 4y agoI love repeating the phrase “if it’s all top priority than none of it is top priority”
- vorpalhex 4y ago> Yes, drop those other things or > Well just do this in like the fastest, shittiest way possible :shrug: We can prioritize and things do get prioritized but if you have 40 hours of time and 80 hours of work, some ball is getting dropped.
- marcosdumay 4y ago> Yes, drop those other things Reminds me of a previous manager I had. He would come with a 20 to 60 hours task, and quite reasonably say "that's urgent, drop anything else and focus on this for as long as you need". The only problem is that he did that about twice a day.
- ratww 4y agoI've definitely had cases where the manager (and on lots of cases, the CEO) tried to "turn those conversation around" and bullshit me. The thing they wanted me to do was maximum priority, but there was also some other totally unpredictable thing (often support related) that I also had to take care of. The higher-up was 100% sure it wasn't a real problem and assumed I was exaggerating the situation. The solution to the problem of lack of trust is of course to convince them, or to leave. If you can't make changes that increase your productivity, you'll become stressed and burned out, and will still not be able to do enough. It is a decision they made.
- galdosdi 4y agoIf you're doing something you think is important ("other totally unpredictable thing (often support related)") at work and your boss says they think it isn't important ("The higher-up was 100% sure it wasn't a real problem and assumed I was exaggerating the situation.") then I would assume your boss is right and you are wrong and act accordingly (start ignoring or delaying dealing with these support-related things when you are busy with the "higher priority" work). Either it will turn out your boss was right and it won't be a big deal, or it will turn out your boss was wrong, and it will be clear to everyone, and before you know it a big pronouncement will come down from up high saying that that "unimportant" thing actually is very important.