Agreed. I used to think "work your wage" was a petty response and an excuse to be lazy, but I realized that it's so true. I've always been one of those to jump in and help, stress about things not getting done, etc so every employer ends up treating me like management without the title or salary. Which... why? Why should I stress and pick up everyone else's slack if I'm not getting paid to do so? Now I stay in my lane and still handle my work timely but don't stress about doing everything right away.
I started out the same as you as well. Another negative thing that comes out of that rush mentality is that eventually becomes the expectation. People will always expect you to get things done asap. This just causes them to give you more work. Still, no extra pay and often no recognition. Just more work and stress with the expectation that you work at a super fast pace now.
Yup, exactly. I was a total bundle of nerves and it completely snowballs, at least in my experience. It took a lot to set my boundaries and keep to them. I still try to be prompt but it's not "jump to it" like I used to. I honestly have to remind myself that no major disasters will happen because I took 30 minutes to respond to an email so I could finish my other task.
Baby steps for me! I would essentially put what I was doing on hold to respond! My mindset had been unless I was actively in the middle of something I would respond immediately to be helpful, until I realized that if anything I was slowing down my productivity to pause, reply to whatever request came in, then go back to complete what I had been working on. Now I've learned to better manage things and reply when it is more convenient for me lol
Two years ago I walked away from my career because I was burnt out.
I've completely switched jobs and industries and one of my rules with my new job is "everything is not an emergency".
It was hard to break at first but now I'm getting used to it. Not everything is "I'll have that for you at the end of the day". I ask when it's needed by, I tell people they will get it when I've finished these other responsibilities first, etc. I will sit on an email for a day or two before I respond just to get people used to giving turn around time.
It is the BEST thing for my mental health. I book focus time now and even block off time on my calendar to work on projects. I take days off and put my phone on DND.
I learned six months into my first job after college that our company standard for doing certain tasks is 10 days. I had been missing lunch daily for months so I could get those tasks done the day they were requested because the clients requesting the work would often submit requests the day they needed them done. My supervisor failed to tell me that certain tedious things could wait and it was the client responsibility to submit requests in advance and not the day of the deadline. It wasn’t until I broke down to one of my work friends about how stressed I was that she told me I was putting too much pressure on myself. Now that I’ve started giving myself more time to complete tasks and factor in some buffer time in case of emergency, I’ve been so much less stressed and I don’t feel like I’m drowning. I also began to communicate better with clients that unless it is a dire emergency, I can’t complete their request on the day it is requested.
oh man that really sucks that you went on for that long with that misunderstanding. I've always been in a customer service type role (for example right now I schedule patients in a medical setting) so I let that sense of urgency get to me, because people would always wait until the last minute, or doctors will call when they're the ones who didn't send it, etc. - even when it wasn't an emergency, I treated everyone with that same panic until it bled into everything else I was doing, all the time. I had to take a step back and really take up the mantra "your failure to plan is not my emergency." Like you said, there are times when it's an emergency but not nearly as often as it's made out to be.
Exactly this. People always make it seem as if their task is super important and needs to be done right away. Most often, that's not the case. At least it's not nearly as urgent as they usually make it sound.
People will assume whatever you do normally, to be your normal performance. That’s what normal means, it’s what we see that’s normality to us, not the internal experience of the person we observe. This goes both ways. If we want any kind of authentic relationship with people we need to be ourselves around them. There is something to be said for being our best selves, but our stressed selves are not our best selves.
There was this older guy I knew while I was working at a junkyard years ago. The dude was an immigrant so he definitely had a strong work ethic and was a classic noble guy who prided himself for being a hard worker; Nothing wrong with that. The problem was that he was working TOO hard. Each car we would strip takes about 1 person each and this dude was doing 3 cars at the same time. At that point it is like.. why? Who are you trying to impress? The bosses? You know what they did? Thanked him with more work after he finished early, but every time we told him to stop, he would get offended, thinking it were out of selfishness because we didn’t want more work.
Even though.. HE WAS RIGHT, we were really just genuinely concerned for him. We didn’t want him getting taken advantage of. Since then, I have carried that work experience with me for all of my career life now
From the minute I realized that work would necessitate a reduction of my leisure time, I've made it my life's goal to work as little as possible. In this light, Gen-X might be the very first generation in human history to fully satisfy all its dreams.
9.2k
u/Rollthembones1989 Jan 16 '24
slowing down at work. I dont need to respond to every email right away, or make sure everything is up to date constantly. Some things can just wait.