I’m going to take a stab in the dark here. You commonly face stress, because you don’t have enough time to complete the tasks before you. People, red tape, unclear definitions and even the environment around you create constant issues that prevent you from being able to meet all your commitments. This is one area that tends to separate professionals from the aspiring. (Please note: this is one aspect of being professional, as I see it, there are many)
I came up with the focus for this article from speaking with a friend who was having a lot of stress, and constantly finding themselves trying to do more than they could. Once it became clear to me what was causing this, I spoke with him about it and hopefully, helped him out. (Time will tell)
The first issue is that we don’t pay attention to the issues that block or interrupt us. When we look back at how long a task took to build, we ignore little things that interrupted or blocked us, because in an ideal world, those things would not stably be part of that task. Perhaps while trying to complete the documentation on something, we had to wait 30 minutes for an email verifying something, perhaps we were pulled away from our desk to answer a few questions for someone, who knows. The point is, that despite the fact the task itself was not responsible for the extra time needed, it was a stable part of the environment; you will always be interrupted by questions, you will always have to wait on emails, you will always have to [Insert random thing].
The first solution is to start realize that nothing is ideal. Every task you take on will have interruptions from delayed resources, unrelated requirements, unanswered questions, and more. Figure how long it will take you to do a task, then once done, look back and figure out how much time you spent focused on the task, and how much time the interruptions took. You’ll start to notice sizable differences. You’ll start to notice trends, 25% (or some other %) of your time gets taken by interruptions.
The second solution is to learn from your past. Until you pay attention to your past, your doomed to suffer from it. Your past gives you clues to help you realize how things will play out in the future. If you start seeing a trend of about 25% of your time is taken by things that are not important to the task at hand, then you can start applying more appropriate time lines. You could say this task will take me 1 hour to complete, but I estimate 15 minutes will be lost to environment issues. My total estimate is one hour and fifteen minutes.
Another source of stress deals with us wanting more. We want more and more and more. At home, we want to do all these things to improve our houses, our family lives, our health, our entertainment, our stuff, and our “fun” things to do. We find ourselves cutting it really close when driving, trying to shave off 5 minutes here and 2 minutes there, pressuring our vehicles and the traffic around us to get us there as fast as possible without getting pulled over.
The whole time, any interruption that creeps in, like traffic from rush hour, car accidents, unsure drivers, holiday traffic, and construction we find ourselves unhappy, stressed, and angry. But, we always know that things like this will happen. We tend to take the fastest time we went from point A as point B as the standard, while anything more is cause to raise your frustration.
Once you start realizing that chaos will always be there, you will start to see that a lot of your time is wasted in frustration, particularly relating to unimportant things. As you start to realize how long these things take, you will be able to apply a better standard in defining what you can fit into your day. You will have less stress and be more trust worthy, as people will know that when you say it will take you an hour to do something, you mean it, unless something highly unlikely creeps into view, and will more often be early, giving more time for reflection and relaxation.
Also, when you start applying seasoned experience like this to the work place, you will find that you will be able to identify time lines better, identify weaknesses better and provide clear reasons for success or failure. You will be more respected at work.
Often relating to our jobs, when we take on a task, we might think that it will only take X time, but once into it, we realize that there are issues we didn’t know going in. Perhaps it’s how large the learning curve is, or how slow the requirements are getting produced, or constant issues with the hardware we have to work with. Whatever the case, because we don’t pay attention to those as having real impact on our tasks, we keep getting stressed that our timeline is closing in, thinking *maybe* we could finish it in time. The whole time, we get closer, the possibility of completing it gets smaller and smaller, and the questionable area gets larger and larger, but we only focus on that possibility of success.
The 3rd Solution is to keep others notified and be clear about changes. Whenever I take on a task, I always identify my confidence in completing it and try to have a small list of key areas I think might cause issues. I never go higher than 90% confidence unless it is a regularly occurring task, that does not have a history that varies much, if at all. By making your managers and coworkers aware of your confidence level, it opens up the possibility that that portion you are not prepared for will be more work than expected and provides a valuable safety net when things go wrong.
If you face issues about something changing, you can say you are going from 75% confidence to 50% confidence that it will be completed on time, because of X issues. Most people are afraid of looking like they don’t know something or can’t handle something at work, and will take on more than they should. Remember this, quite often the original numbers for a project or task were created by looking at a one or two line description and assigning a number off the top of some one’s head. Remember that when you agree to them, and apply the confidence level, you are being clear about your knowledge, making it better known whether you can finish something or not.
Answer me this, which is better, an employee who takes on a lot, gets most of it done, but often causes delay because they didn’t get it done in time (for [insert random excuses]), or someone who says it will take longer, who always gets the tasks done on time, baring something catastrophic. Sometimes, it’s nice to get the hacked work out faster, but most companies want people who know there limits, so management can really figure out what is needed, and what is possible.
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