I’ve read three articles this week in Economist and Havard Business Review which are all saying expectations of workload and ability to multi-task have got out of hand but no-one’s doing anything about it…

Thinking back to late 90’s when I started work, before email and Blackberries, it never felt so pressured to get everything done NOW. And people actually seemed to accept it if you said you were busy.

IME the number of emails I get in a day is total overload, and expectations of just how quickly things can be done have lost all touch with reality…

Anyone else or just me? My boss doesn’t seem to think there’s a problem…

Im not sure where i stand on this. i get a lot of emails from about a dozen different projects each day. Most of the time they dont require much more than a quick decision or answer but those that do i just try to manage the expectation by telling them when it can be done. if i can’t do it by tomorrow i no longer feel compelled to say i can. and people are happier because of it, they now know a realistic finishing time rather than my stufff being later than an impossible target time that i set

Your boss is perhaps a master of delegation if he isn’t feeling the pressure.

I’ll always remember an article I read in my older girlfriend’s copy of Cosmo (inserts blushing emoticon) at the tender age of 19… It dealt with just this subject, way back in ’94. The advice was to tell demanding people that you’d get back to them with a decision within two days. You set the expectations, even if it’s a 20 word email or a 30 second conversation.

If you use Outlook, use the flag system to prioritise replies. I do this and half of the demanding people disappear into the background. The important emails are replied to within a couple of days, the rest fade into obscurity.

We have some chalet bedrooms with small, wet-room en-suite bathrooms. The loo and shower head are in close proximity. Makes multi-tasking really easy.

If I don’t give a customer what they want (usually speccing and pricing a back up/archive/antivirus software project) within 2-4 hours, they throw a hissy fit…

If someone asks me to do something, and I respond with ‘I’m busy, give me (insert time here, usually within an hour), this is, customers, suppliers and colleagues, that is met with ‘oh OK, well, I need you to do this now, could you put it to the top of your list?’.

One customer now refuses to deal with a colleague as he asked her to let him finish what he was working on, then he could give her request his full attention. 10 mins wait tops. ‘Am I not important enough for you’ was her response.

Folk need to chill the flip out…

I blame women and their claim to multitasking

I had a customer like that so when he started asking me to drop everything I asked him what he would expect me to do when the next important customer came along and I was working on his stuff. He backed down and has been much easier to deal with since.
But yes, people need to chill the flip out a wee bit and not expect everything to be all about them all the time.

Agree with NZCol – sometimes you have to push back. If I feel I’m not getting respect from the client, I prefer not to work for them. Colleagues can be more insistent IMHO, as you are more familiar and available to them. But as User-Removed said, some mails can be safely ignored – the person who sent it is likely to be under similar pressure, and may well forget they mailed you.

the person who sent it is likely to be under similar pressure, and may well forget they mailed you.

Since working this one out, my life has become a whole lot easier….

Though I’m now probably one of those buggers who every one complains never answers his emails…

you should try the construction industry. Everyone thinks we sit around waiting for the phone to ring, then don cape and sort out their problem yesterday. They have no concept that work can be in place months in advance.

And the best being, can you pop round when I get in from work at 7 on Friday as they think theirs is an emergency, explain that you can’t do that but could break into my weekend and pop round first thing saturday at 8 is usually met with can you do 10 as that is too early….. Next week it is then!

My boss and colleagues are too bad, apart from one who complains she gets 200 emails a day. I do the same job as her, but don’t get anything like that. It turns up she is signed up to three big mailing lists, and insists she can’t leave them for fear of missing something.

Undergrads are getting increasingly demanding. We get emails at 11pm on a friday and get a follow up on sunday if we haven’t replied. Naturally very few lecturers do reply as we don’t work weekends, but the students forget this.

I’ve also had my lunch interrupted three times this week already with students demanding something or other.

“Which priority is the priority?” is a question I ask regularly. I sometimes put my auto response on my email so people know not to expect instant responses.

Mulit-tasking is a brilliant way of getting several jobs done badly rather than one job done properly.

At least, that’s what I say when a woman starts whanging on about how females are better at multi-tasking than men.

Something my Mum said to me a couple of weeks ago, that how when she (and my Dad) worked it just seemed more structured/organised than now. And there is probably something in that.

And work in your timescale – ie as an early starter I would suggest meetings at 9am or before, rather than the +5pm crowd. As I knew they would push back, but it kinda brought the neutrality back in.

+1 NZCol – done the same myself, asked the demanding (internal) customer which one of his collegues did he want me screw over.

Good Prioritisation is an art for sure.

I’m getting better at it but then I can delegate as well.

The general principle goes….

Can you delegate? If not, why not? Fix that problem then delegate.
Is it really important? If not, drop it. Don’t lead people on. DROP IT.
If it is really important then do it. Don’t procastinate, DO IT.
Do you just want to do it?

Finally, if your workload is just huge, you can’t possibly achieve it all so cherry pick the stuff that’s important or you want to do and set yourself tasks on a daily basis. Don’t deviate from those tasks for that day. Drop the rest.

Multi-tasking is a misnomer. You can do one thing properly at once, or you can do lots of things badly simultaneously. it’s your choice.

One of the more useful course I was once sent on as a fresh graduate at my first palce of work was a time management course. Most was piffly common sense dressed up as a management speak, but one little “tool” I cam away with and still mentally use is this:

think of a 2×2 grid. Columns are titled High importance and Low importance.
One row titled Sooner the other Later. It was a useful exercise to partition tasks into their importance and how urgently they needed doing (genuine urgency, not made up by someone). There was also a little box to one side I called “Silly not too”. There’s no need to classify a request for a signature, say, or forwarding an email. You can just do it now as “it’s silly not to”.

The other thing I used to do when in an office was pretty much refuse (either to their face or by avoiding them) to do anything after lunchtime on a friday for delivery by the end of the day. Nothing moves so fast in real estate that it could possibly have that kind of genuine deadline and I knew full well there was nothing they could be doing with my work over the weekend. So bollox to ’em! 😉

Now as a freelancer however, if a client wants it immediately they get it immediately. Even if it’s 8pm on a saturday night. But in this case I dont resent it, like I used to.

The other thing I used to do when in an office was pretty much refuse (either to their face or by avoiding them) to do anything after lunchtime on a friday for delivery by the end of the day.

Always used that time for planning meeting for the next week’s activities. Everyone wants to get home early, so the meeting goes quickly with no faffing about. Faff and you’re staying late. 9:05 Monday morning (allow 5mins for coffee), nobody has any excuses – they know exactly what they’re sposed to be doing up until Friday lunchtime.

Pre-emptive thanks are the worst. Stupid emails from a delegator saying “Thanks for doing xxxxx” when they mean “could you please do xxxxxx”. Makes you psychologically think it’s more urgent (or even late) than it really is.

If it’s email that’s the problem, just don’t open Outlook (or whatever) until you’ve got time to read it. You don’t need to leave it open all day.

Right now I’m writing this, whilst reading the bbc news, eating some porridge and drinking some coffee, I’m also prioritising my workload for the day and drafting an e-mail to a mate.
All the while I’m managing to breathe.

A guy I worked for was a fan of the 80/20 rule – get 80% of the work done in 20 minutes!

TSY +1 I must be a multi-tasking genius for a man,as I can simultaneously drink beer,scratch my arse ,think about sex,and breathe. HTH
Ian

But not spellcheck apparently

I’m thinking about sex as well now.

Pretty much a one man army, me.

oh, and something my ex-boss use to say:

“Your priority is anything that could get me fired”, everything else is secondary.

I think a lot of people have difficulties in saying no, especially to a boss.

“I’ve got to do this, my boss has told me to” – a boss who perhaps has no idea of how busy you really are due to work coming in from all angles. If you don’t tell them, some will just keep giving you more and more; they’re waiting for you to say “stop,” you’re buckling under the weight.

Far better to go “well, I can do that, but I’ve got this important thing to do already, so it’ll be tomorrow before I can look at it / you tell me which is more important.” Makes life a lot easier.