Having a pile of work, coupled with a fully booked calendar is enough to make you start hyperventilating.
After all, you have deliverables that need to be done, and discussions that need to be had. The two are not mutually exclusive, both need to get done.
The tendency is push one of the two off.
“I need to work, these meetings can wait a week”
And then those meetings turn into more work, fires, and emergencies because we pushed them off.
We can delegate the work to others which would help get it done. Maybe we’ll have to review their work which might give way to more meetings and/or frustration at just having “to do it yourself”.
Let’s assume it’s all yours and you can’t get rid of it because it’s all things that you must do and you must attend.
What do you do?
How do you stop worrying about it all?
How do you stop freaking out about what you’re not going to get done?
My approach (and might not work for everyone)
- Accept you are not going to get it all done.
- Prioritize what Needs to get done vs what you Want to get done (seriously that will switch up many things you never saw coming)
- Work on the pile.
In a given week, you might get through your needs only, that’s okay, at least you’ll know that you have focused on the right things to get done that matter to you and your team.
If your pile continues to grow and never shrinks, then there are some other problems there that require more creative solutions – but generally with a pile of work, it’s that we don’t want to prioritize what is important and that is what scares us the most.
