Too many of us are overstressed, overbusy, overwhelmed, overloaded, overworked.
This leads to exhaustion, poor health, deteriorating habits, depression, burnout, unhappiness. Overloading ourselves and overworking ourselves is not a recipe for success or happiness.
There are a number of factors that lead to being overworked, but here are a few of the most common:
- You are working a job that demands you to work too much, and have little control over your schedule or workload.
- You have to work multiple jobs to pay the bills, and can’t seem to do much about it.
- You overcommit and overload yourself, and always seem to be working and yet never seem to be doing enough.
- You’re always connected, always responding to messages, always checking email, always doing a thousand tasks. Always stressed and overwhelmed.
The first two problems are difficult to solve, because you don’t always have a lot of control. We’ll talk about the antidote to these problems…
Make a Structural Change
If you have a job that overworks you, or you work two or more jobs … it’s not working out well. You’re overworked and leading to a disaster.
You need to make a structural change.
Some ideas for structural changes you can consider:
- Get more focused & effective, and get your workload done in less time. This lets you do the same workload but not spend as much time working.
- Reduce your workload — if you can control this, then find a way to cut out the less important tasks and focus on the higher priority tasks. If you don’t control your workload, then you must talk to management. Tell them you’re going to be more effective working on high priority tasks, more focused — but that you need to work fewer hours. Ask them to help you cut less important tasks from your workload.
- If you’re working two or more jobs, find a side hustle that pays more per hour than your current jobs. Yes, it’s possible (for most people). Do more of that and less of the other jobs, so that you can work fewer hours.
- Set boundaries for yourself — talk to your supervisor, talk to HR, and tell them you cannot sustain the hours you’re working. Set a boundary of what hours you work, and another boundary of how much you’re expected to respond to messages (so that you can focus and get more done). This is a scary conversation for most people. It’s less scary than burnout, trust us.
Which of these structural changes need to happen for you? Are there others you should consider?