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Every day I am worn out. My entire day is interruptions. 3-4 meetings, emails, someone needing something by tomorrow, neverending to-do lists, having to report in on progress at daily scrum meetings, random bookkeeping tasks or HR needing me to complete some stupid training. I feel like technology has made matters worse. In the old days of white collar work, you had maybe a stack of papers on your desk that was the work you need to complete and you would go through it sequentially. Now, TODOs are spread across a million different emails and internal websites and things you talked about in the hallway and yada yada. Plus, so many miscellaneous tasks that come up as a result of doing other tasks. My laptop has about 20 open applications and 20 browser tabs open.
Maybe I'm just bad at multitasking? As an engineer, I don't feel like my day should have to be like this. I need many hours in a row of focus or else nothing gets finished.
There's no such thing as multitasking.
It does sound like you should have a single to-do list somewhere. Maybe read "Getting Things Done" or something. That won't fix your meetings and distractions, but having TODOs spread all over is at least a problem you can solve yourself.
It's all because companies are playing it cheap and not staffing accordingly for the projected workload. So what you have is a burned out workforce and high costly turnover everywhere
Very true, people would have a much better work/life balance if some of the load was taken off their shoulders.
This is exactly what I love about my job, never a dull moment, many fires to put out every day. As an exempt manager I still manage to keep to a 40 hour week most of the time, but there is always something left to do when I come in the next day. Having been short two people for nearly two months, I have been interviewing in addition to the usual work, and having to prioritize assignments to the people that are left until replacements are hired and trained. For me there's nothing worse than sitting around with nothing to do.
I really hope you mean that as sarcasm, not how you really feel. Because historically that was considered a sign of being a poor manager--having a lot of fires to put out. The best managers have few/no fires because they think ahead, plan ahead, and are ready when situations arise. Managers who like putting out fires tend to be firebugs who start them in the first place just so they can have a fire to put out. But all that firefighting causes incredible disruption to the efficient conduct of the main purpose of the business.
If you are sitting around with nothing to do hoping for a fire to put out, then you aren't doing your job preventing the fire in the first place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankMiller
There's no such thing as multitasking.
It does sound like you should have a single to-do list somewhere. Maybe read "Getting Things Done" or something. That won't fix your meetings and distractions, but having TODOs spread all over is at least a problem you can solve yourself.
Often you really have no control over the TO DOs because they fall like snowflakes from management who think everything is an emergency. Drop this and do that. That's kind of my typical day. I have a nice list of work planned, then BOOM! A new, urgent, must do right now, that will shortly get replaced by a new, urgent team meeting, followed by another new, urgent, need-it-yesterday task. By the end of the day I've done a lot of work, but very little forward progress has been made. And that new, urgent, must do right now task? Oh, don't worry about that, OBE since last week; been sitting in the boss's in box since September.
Technology has a role in this. My day, like many managers, consists of individual and group meetings, as well as individual projects.
The problem is that email, cell phones, text messages and direct messages mean that I can never have quiet time, despite having an office.
I purposely check my email at set times during the day in order to provide myself time to work on stuff, yet people are shocked that I haven’t checked email in 3 hours. Sometimes if I don’t respond to an email quickly enough, my desk phone will ring, and if I send the call to voicemail, my cell goes off.
In an electronic sense, we are no better than the Wall Street floor traders of the 1920s-1980s. We are really all in one room screaming at one another.
Technology has a role in this. My day, like many managers, consists of individual and group meetings, as well as individual projects.
The problem is that email, cell phones, text messages and direct messages mean that I can never have quiet time, despite having an office.
I purposely check my email at set times during the day in order to provide myself time to work on stuff, yet people are shocked that I haven’t checked email in 3 hours. Sometimes if I don’t respond to an email quickly enough, my desk phone will ring, and if I send the call to voicemail, my cell goes off.
In an electronic sense, we are no better than the Wall Street floor traders of the 1920s-1980s. We are really all in one room screaming at one another.
Honestly, that problem isn't the technology so much as we used to have secretaries for that. They answered the phone and were well enough informed to make a decision if you needed to be interrupted; if they could handle it themselves; if it could be done by someone else; or if it could wait. Now most of us don't have secretaries any more or if we do, they are group admins who really don't know how to do what a real, professional secretary did.
Often you really have no control over the TO DOs because they fall like snowflakes from management who think everything is an emergency. Drop this and do that. That's kind of my typical day. I have a nice list of work planned, then BOOM! A new, urgent, must do right now, that will shortly get replaced by a new, urgent team meeting, followed by another new, urgent, need-it-yesterday task. By the end of the day I've done a lot of work, but very little forward progress has been made. And that new, urgent, must do right now task? Oh, don't worry about that, OBE since last week; been sitting in the boss's in box since September.
Exactly. For me it's like a stack of working that keeps growing. I need 20 hours, with uniterrupted segments of at least 4 hours each, to complete Task A. I have another Task B that requires similar time and focus. I start working on Task A, but then someone wants to see progress on Task B, so I switch to that task just for the sake of showing that I'm making progress . But then I get bombarded with planning for Tasks C and D that will be in the next sprint. These turn into 4 tasks C1, C2, D1 and D2 that people expect done next day. Ok, finally some time to work on Task A again, but since I haven't worked on it for a while, it's going to take me an extra couple hours just to get back to where I was (because it's engineering work and requires setting up a lot of tools). Oh, but now we have a business review meeting and I have to make Powerpoint showing what I've accomplished and give the managers dates when Tasks A and B will be done with 100% certainty.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,186,228 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff
I really hope you mean that as sarcasm, not how you really feel. Because historically that was considered a sign of being a poor manager--having a lot of fires to put out. The best managers have few/no fires because they think ahead, plan ahead, and are ready when situations arise. Managers who like putting out fires tend to be firebugs who start them in the first place just so they can have a fire to put out. But all that firefighting causes incredible disruption to the efficient conduct of the main purpose of the business.
If you are sitting around with nothing to do hoping for a fire to put out, then you aren't doing your job preventing the fire in the first place.
Often you really have no control over the TO DOs because they fall like snowflakes from management who think everything is an emergency. Drop this and do that. That's kind of my typical day. I have a nice list of work planned, then BOOM! A new, urgent, must do right now, that will shortly get replaced by a new, urgent team meeting, followed by another new, urgent, need-it-yesterday task. By the end of the day I've done a lot of work, but very little forward progress has been made. And that new, urgent, must do right now task? Oh, don't worry about that, OBE since last week; been sitting in the boss's in box since September.
I am involved in a lot of projects with other departments in the organization, some requiring immediate attention on short notice, such as a recent major change in lease accounting standards. I have no control over when that kind of thing will happen. The nature of our work means a lot of unexpected urgent work. As I put it the other day in a meeting, unusual situations are very normal. My own staff is very well organized. With 2 people short we have managed to get all the work done with deadlines met for 6 weeks during which time I have hired the replacements.
I'm glad that most meetings are virtual now so that I can multitask through those that I have no integral role.
But what I dislike is that now I get messaged all the time. And of course an immediate reply is desired - even though I may have to do a lot of thinking, referencing and calculations to come up with an answer. At least with email that would buy you some time. Your status can show that you're in a call/meeting and it makes no difference - you'll get multiple messages anyway.
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