Take charge of your work load

When you have a lot of work to do, you may not be as helpless as you think. You could keep your head down, work long hours and hope that ‘someday’ you will get through it all. Or you could take some of the suggestions below.

REDEFINE THE WORK: Think of your job as delivering a result instead of doing every single thing that hits your desk. Take charge of what you really need to work on based on your awareness of priorities in your team or office and then renegotiate the deadlines for any others. When you do this you avoid the trap of a never-ending cycle of busy-ness that eats up hours instead of delivering good value.

FIGURE OUT WHAT COUNTS: Things that make a difference and not what you enjoy doing. This does not mean the other stuff is not important. It just means you have to be ruthless with what you spend you time. If you focus on the real priorities you’ll not be distracted worrying about the 100 other tasks that need doing but which you’ve had to reschedule.

GIVE TIME FOR EMERGENCIES: Building some slack in your schedule: Sounds counter-intuitive when you have loads to do. Doing this is recognising that emergencies happens. So if you assign only 90% of your hours on the tasks for the day, you can deal with that emergency when it comes. But be realistic about how much time emergencies happen and how much time they take so that you can handle then without feeling becoming unnecessarily stressed.

DELEGATE QUICKLY AND THOUGHTFULLY: Think of delegation not just as passing on work that you do not have the time to do yourself but as an opportunity to get the best job done. Even if you are the best person to do it but have other pressing priorities then pass it on and quickly to someone who can. And please give the credit to whoever does the work on your behalf.

Now take action: How can you prioritise your work load better?