Why do people let themselves get overwhelmed at work?
November 2nd, 2012 GTD Times Team - Staff ContributorsCategories | David Allen | Getting Things Done | Implementation | Inspiration
Question: What are the main reasons why people let themselves get overwhelmed at work?
David Allen’s answer: People tend to both over-commit and to be inefficient. Few people know exactly how much work they actually have, and therefore must take everything on that they think about and that others ask them to do. Their integrity forces them to agree to take things on because, not being real clear how many projects they already have on their plate, some part of them thinks they actually MIGHT be able to do it. And most people are inefficient because they don’t force themselves to decide what things mean and what they are actually going to do about them when they first show up. So, they are constantly rethinking the same things over and over and not making any progress in doing so–only adding to their stress. And when they DO finally decide what to do, it’s usually because they have allowed the situation to get into “last-minute” mode, and they now have to go deal with things as a crisis, one at a time, instead of in an orderly, timely, manner. For example, when you are talking to your boss about the urgent thing, why not also talk about the five things you need to talk to her or him about, before they are urgent? Most people are not that good at making next action decisions and organizing the results effectively. The inefficiency creates greater inefficiency, and it can get out of hand easily.
Great diagnosis – what’s the cure?!
The cure, in 3 letters, is GTD.
You might also want to look at these GTD Times posts on the 5 phases of GTD workflow.
http://www.gtdtimes.com/?s=GTD+Best+Practices%3A&go=GO
My cure is creating a list of responsibilities and goals. So when it comes to knowing my limits of what I can handle at the moment, I know when to say “no” to a project or person. It also helps me prioritize my todo list easier as well, because I actually know what’s important right now, thus making my worries less demanding and my creativity more lively flowing.
Another thing I do though is meditate and exercise to keep stress down as low as I can get it to be. 2 days a week I meditate, and 6 days a week I exercise.