When we’re drowning at work, a lot of people will tell you to “just ask for help” or “say no to new work.”
Sounds easy enough. WEIRDLY hard to do though, right?
When I was first practicing law, I knew I was overwhelmed. But I wasn’t sure if it was *objectively reasonable* to be that overwhelmed.
I felt insecure that I should be able to do everything on my plate, so I didn’t feel confident enough to say no or protect my boundaries.
Fast forward to now:
Over the past two weeks, I’ve had three clients ask for relief and/or more support from bosses at work – all with great results.
The difference: They had confidence based on truly understanding their capacity and the objectively unreasonable demands on it. They had the information to support their positions, giving them that confidence and the ability to be specific in requests for support from bosses at work.
This, unfortunately, doesn’t come from a quick-tip kind of strategy I can share in a succinct post.
It comes from weeks of work through my time management program, where we spend time really getting clear on what your capacity is, how to understand how long things take, how to breakdown projects, and understanding how your project tasks interact across all work projects and your personal life.
Through it all, you get a more visual, concrete, objective sense of what you capacity is and what your workload is.
For some clients, in the words of one past program members, they realize they have a workload problem – not a “me” problem.
This is HUGE. Because when you realize it’s a workload problem (and there’s nothing wrong with you for not being able to do it all), you can confidently say no and advocate for yourself – with concrete explanations to back it up.
I’m learning that the objectivity my method provides – and the confident self-advocacy it allows – is one of the most powerful outcomes of my method for many.
If you’d like to get there too, my next six-week program kicks off April 30th. You can learn more about it and sign up here. Let’s get you confidently protecting your time.
