In this episode of the Bright Method Podcast, I dig into something I wish I’d fully appreciated earlier in my career: your boss likely has no idea what’s actually on your plate. That’s true whether you work for multiple people or just one—and it matters when it comes to managing your workload in a realistic and less overwhelming way.
We’ll cover:
- Why you shouldn’t assume the work being assigned to you is reasonable or doable
- What it looks like to truly take ownership of your workload—and why it’s empowering
- Why understanding your own capacity is the first step in managing your workload
- Why this empowers you to propose solutions you want and protect the kind of work you enjoy
- What to do when your boss won’t adjust your workload—and how that clarity can still serve you
- Why boundaries “work” even when they don’t go the way you want them to
I also talk through how a visual, calendar-based system helped me go from feeling constantly underwater to confidently managing what I could take on—and even turning down work in a clear, strategic way.
Plus, I share a client story about how this clarity led to a more reasonable workload and enjoyable work that made a bigger impact.
If you’d like a free way to get started with this system, check out my 5-day Reset & Refresh series at kellynolan.com/refresh. You can also DM me the word “refresh” on Instagram to get the link.
Links you might enjoy:
✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you’re ready for a full time management system that’s realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It’s helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.
🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.
Full Transcript
Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally.
Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.
Hey. Hey, and welcome back. Alright, so today what I wanna talk about is the idea that your boss likely has no idea what is on your plate. And that is obviously important when it comes to managing workload and who’s in charge of managing workload and all of that. So I wanna talk about it today. And the reason.
I mean, when I talk about this partly it sounds obvious, like of course, and it’s like up to me to manage my workload and all this kind of stuff, but I think even [00:01:00] if we kind of get that intellectually, I at least really struggled to fully appreciate this stuff when I was pretty overwhelmed for a period of time.
I used to go into partner’s offices, get assignments, get new cases, whatever it might be, and kind of almost feel angry inside during periods of time because I was essentially like railing against them in my head as I walked out the office door. After they’d given me the assignment, kind of like scream thinking, like, how could they do this to me?
Don’t they know how swamped I am? All this kind of stuff. Of course, I didn’t really say any of that, but I very much thought of it on multiple different occasions. I. Here’s just the real thing that I didn’t appreciate is that they had no idea how swamped I was. Often I’m not saying all people we’re gonna address that as well.
When the people do know how swamped you are and can candidly don’t really care. But often and more often [00:02:00] than not, and if you haven’t had this discussion, I would assume that you’re in this boat. More often than not, your bosses have no idea how swamped you are. In fact, they have no idea whether you’re swamped or not.
’cause they just don’t know how much work or fully what work is on your plate. I believe this, whether you work for multiple people or even just one person. In the case of multiple people, the issue is pretty obvious. I mean, you might have a few bosses, I’m thinking like past me, I was an associate at a law firm.
I worked for multiple different partners. Or you might have one boss in a department, but your department supports many other departments. So even though you technically have one boss, you have a lot of demands from a lot of different people. For your time. And in both cases, a lot of people are asking things of you and have no idea what other people are demanding of you and putting on your plate.
So just to really spell it out and be obvious, each boss truly has no idea how full your capacity is because they are [00:03:00] not assigning all of the work that you have on your plate to you. But again, I also really think this happens, even if you just have one boss. I mean almost a hundred percent. I’ll say probably just to be safe.
They probably don’t remember every task they’ve given you, and they definitely have no idea how it all stacks up in terms of your workload and deadlines and all of that. They don’t know what tasks are due this week. They don’t know what your day looks like. They don’t know what your workload looks like across this week or next week or this month or next month.
They don’t know. And so in any of these scenarios, multiple bosses or one boss. The person assigning you a specific assignment has no idea if the task that they’re putting on your plate is like tipping you over into overwhelm or just adding to it like, oh, being buried and overwhelm that you have going on.
And so me railing against that partner who just gave me that assignment, they had no idea. And I think that’s [00:04:00] really, really important to talk about and really absorb and understand so that we can do something about it. So let’s break this down a little bit more. I wanna talk about why all of this matters in, I think there are about five points I wanna make.
The first is, do not assume that the work you are being given is reasonable or possible. Again, we just said bosses have no idea what’s on your plate, so do not assume that what they’re giving you is reasonable. And I say that because I think I thought that. Taking a step back before I became a lawyer, I’d had a lot of jobs, but they were relatively manageable jobs.
You know, I’d worked at Caribou Coffee, I, my closest job, I’d worked a lot at jobs like that. I’d waited tables, I’d taught tennis, I’d done all these things, babysat. I had had one solid office job before at the Aspen Institute, but we went through phases of like being really busy. But on the whole, during a lot of the year, it was manageable and then we’d go through phases that were real sprints.
But you saw like [00:05:00] the light at the end of the tunnel, very different than sprinting on end as a lawyer, like without that tunnel, like without any light in that tunnel. And. So for the most part, my experience had been in relatively manageable jobs and school where people are managing your workload for the most part.
Yes, you take multiple different classes, you get different assignments, but on the whole, there’s some communication at a school level about like what’s allowable from like a homework and workload perspective. I think I assumed that that was still happening on some level in my workload. I dunno, it’s just kind of like, you know, when you live your whole life with some assumption like that, it’s understandable that you kind of proceed as if that assumption is still in existence.
And the reason this is important is I thought I should be able to do all of this work because they wouldn’t ask me to do it if I couldn’t. And that’s just not true. As [00:06:00] we just talked about. They don’t know all the work that’s on my plate, and so they don’t know whether it’s reasonable or not, especially as it all stacks up, is it reasonable or not?
And I think that’s just a really important thing to understand is that no one else is looking out for your workload. No one else is making sure your workload is reasonable. Everybody through no maliciousness. Is trying to make their own lives easier, so if they can keep putting things on your plate and knowing they will get done on time and things like that, and you are making their life easier, they’re going to keep making their own lives easier.
Again, it’s not a bad thing. I don’t mean it like they’re not a bad person, is what I mean. I think it’s natural. We’re all overworked, we’re all struggling at different times of our life, and so we are going to delegate and ask for help and put things on other people’s plates if we can. Some leaders are better at checking in than others, but I don’t actually assign any like maliciousness to this in the same [00:07:00] way that I just also think that people aren’t thinking about us all that much.
Like everyone is spending the vast majority of their time focused on their own life. You know, their own house repairs, their own mortgage, their own career projects, their own networking, kids logistics, vacation planning, marriage, holidays, like people’s brains are busy and they’re focused on. For the most part, their own lives in the way that we all are.
And so I just share that to say that. People don’t know what’s on your plate. They’re not thinking about you enough to fully understand the nuances of everything going on with your workload. And so don’t assume that they are giving you a reasonable amount of work. They might be giving you an unreasonable, impossible amount of work, and so don’t just take it as this is.
Reasonable and I have to do this. And if I can’t do it, it means that I am a bad employee or I am inefficient or anything like that because all of those thoughts assume that somebody else could get all this work done and that is not necessarily the case. And so what does that [00:08:00] mean? It means that it is up to us individually to manage our own workload, and that was a weird realization for me when it hit.
It candidly felt kind of freeing and empowering to me when I realized it. Like, oh, I’m not just taking it. I’m not just taking everything that people are giving to me. I don’t have to. I am in charge of managing my own workload and telling people when I have too much and communicating that out and doing it strategically and with solutions and all of that, but it is.
My power to push back, and it’s my responsibility to push back so that I can actually get the work done well on time that requires the work. Be realistic. And so when I say it’s on you to manage your own workload, I hope you feel that. I mean, there is responsibility in that and it’s a whole skill set to learn, but I also think it’s really kind of freeing and empowering and exciting when you really absorb that and start feeling like stronger and stronger in that role.[00:09:00]
To make sure that you understand your capacity, understand your workload, understand how they come together, and manage it so that you are having that realistic workload and hopefully full of things that you really want to be doing. So my second point of this is I believe that you need a system to help you know how to do that.
At the very least, you just have to understand that you have to understand your capacity and your workload. You know, we’re talking about. Whether bosses understand whether you are overwhelmed or how full your capacity is and all that kind of stuff, if you don’t understand, they definitely don’t understand.
So you need to really understand and what’s important here is I at least needed. A system that showed me visually in a more objective way, what was my capacity and how full was it? So taking a step back before I started using the Bright Method, I knew I was overwhelmed. I mean, at [00:10:00] least I highly suspected based on how I felt that I was completely overwhelmed by work, but I did not know if that feeling was objectively reasonable based on my workload, because.
I like was pretty sure I was drowning, but I wasn’t fully sure. And so that makes it really difficult to say no, to say later, to draw boundaries, to deal with pushback on boundaries when you’re not fully convinced that it’s reasonable for you to feel that way. And I don’t, I’m obviously not saying like feelings are reasonable and justified no matter how you feel, but I hope you get what I’m saying.
It’s more the like. Does the data back up my feeling? Am I feeling this based on rational reasons that allow me to back up my nose, feel confident in drawing those boundaries and things like that? When I started using the Bright Method and having more clarity on, okay, this is my capacity, this is how full it is, because my calendar is full with all the things I need to [00:11:00] do to hit these deadlines and things like that.
Then when new requests were made on my time, I was able to evaluate them better. I was able to say no with confidence that there’s no way I’m gonna get that done in the next two weeks or. I could e then initially say this or say this when I got pushback. If you want me to do this, we’re gonna have to move these other things out.
Or if you want me to do this, you’re gonna have to go talk to that other partner because I have this, this, and this deliverables like due to them in the next two weeks. And if you want me to have five, 10 hours a week to give to you, you need to go talk to that partner. Or I’m happy to facilitate that conversation.
But. I hope you can hear that. Suddenly I got a lot more confident in how I managed my workload and protected myself and my time and my energy because I had the specifics at my fingertips using a system, and it all really came down to I understood my capacity and I understood my workload, and I understood how new [00:12:00] requests were coming in on my time and how they would have an impact on those things.
That’s what I really mean here is whether you use the Bright Method or something else, you need to have a lot of clarity about your capacity, your workload, the specifics, and all of that so that you can manage your workload in a way that maybe you haven’t yet with more confidence. Okay, so 0.1 is don’t assume the work that they’re giving you is reasonable or even possible.
They have no idea. It’s up to you to make sure that your workload is reasonable. Point two is to do that. I firmly believe you need a system that helps you know how to do that. For me, it’s obviously the bright method for you, it could be something else. That’s totally fine. Just make sure that you have the clarity and 0.3 is related.
This is as you are having these discussions about your workload, whether you are overwhelmed and like you were overworked and you were having a discussion to help you get too reasonable or. You have a reasonable workload, but a request has come in [00:13:00] that would push you into unreasonable. How do you have these discussions?
What I really love about these types of systems and this, this clarity, really is what it comes down to. The clarity is that you can propose a solution you want. When you have the clarity of all those specifics, you propose the solution you want, and I’ve talked about this before. I know I talked about it in episode four on prioritizing.
I think I also talked about it in another one that I’ll share about like what to do if your calendar overwhelms you when you look at it. I’ll put that number in the show notes for you, but especially in those conversations where you realize you’re overworked and you are like, I need to get these three projects off my plate, or we need to punt them out farther, or things like that.
I talk about in those episodes, especially number four, about how to have those conversations, like how to frame it, you know, have the specifics and things like that. Part of that discussion, which I’m not gonna go fully into again, is you proposing the solution you want. Again, I wanna get these three projects off.
This will help me focus on [00:14:00] these five other projects or whatever it is. Hopefully you’re keeping the stuff you really wanna keep. And by doing all of this, by you taking the reins of managing your workload, you also not only hopefully will you get a more reasonable workload, but you also get a workload you’re excited about because you are also getting to keep the work that you hopefully really want.
So check out those episodes if you need help with kind of like how to structure that conversation. If you wanna take my approach, obviously you can take a different approach, but. That’s where I kind of get a little bit more into the nitty gritty of how to have that conversation. Point four is obviously they’re gonna respond to that conversation, so you’re trying to manage your workload.
You have this conversation around your workload, or you push back against workload, or it might not be like a formal sitdown conversation, but you’re managing your workload and there’s some sort of communication going around that, whether it’s, again, getting a lot of projects off your plate or saying no to new projects, you.
As [00:15:00] someone managing your own workload, we’ll be doing some of those things constantly over time. I wish it was like, get your workload reasonable and it’ll always be reasonable, but it’s a constant recalibration and so there are these conversations around that. What I will say is I have been pleasantly surprised at how often my clients have these types of conversations and they are received really well, like they’re received in a way that’s like.
The boss had no idea how many meetings they had on their plate, or they didn’t know that between all the departments asking for like a department’s help, that there were like 12 different priorities being set across all these different departments like bosses I have found, have often done a great job stepping in and helping people manage their workload once they are aware of the workload That said.
There are obviously bosses that don’t do as good of a job of that, where the message can still be kind of like, no, I need you to do it all, even though it’s impossible, [00:16:00] essentially. They’re never gonna say that, but I just need you to figure out a way to do it all. And as I’ve talked about before, that is still really, really valuable data.
It sucks. There’s no getting around it, like hearing that that sucks and feel those feelings. But also realize the value of having that real clarity now that that is their response to you when you’re demonstrating leadership to make sure your own workload is reasonable so you can do your work well.
That is a strong position and conversation to make, and if they are not meeting you there, then candidly to me, that is weak leadership. But that is a different conversation. But at the end of the day, if they don’t help you manage your workload to make it realistic, then that tells you something about the culture that you’re in.
’cause now you know they are not going to work with you to keep your workload reasonable. It’s not an important goal to them. Candidly, it’s not a smart business move either. But that again, I [00:17:00] digress. And now you know, they’re demanding. You do an impossible amount of work when you cannot, even if they demand it.
And what I want to. Flip this a little bit, instead of being like, this is all doom and gloom now is it is also somewhat freeing. To hear that from someone, and I say this from my experience, I’ve done this at the second law firm I worked for, just to be clear, the first law firm I worked for, this type of stuff, worked beautifully for the most part.
Second law firm, I got a lot of just do it. Just do it. I know you’re saying no, we’re still gonna make you do it. That kind of thing. And it was just was, it was not great. But once I had the real clarity around, oh, this is just how it is here, that was also freeing because it is a lot harder. To constantly sacrifice your personal life, whatever that looks like for a company that now very clearly is not gonna help you.
And again, I just wanna reiterate, these are not bad people. Sometimes they can be [00:18:00] not great people, but sometimes it can be your process overwhelmed themselves. The department is overwhelmed themselves. There’s no one else to give the work to all that kind of stuff. And so the answer is you have to keep doing that work, but that’s still not giving you the life that you want.
I just wanna be clear about that, that I still don’t think I’ve worked for bad people, but good people can still not get you where you wanna go. And so that clarity is really important to understand is if you do all this work of. I’m gonna make sure my workload’s reasonable. I’m gonna propose a solution that is great.
I’m going to like have hard conversations around this and really prioritize what I view as a priority. Be open to being flexible on that, work with people, but still have the clarity of what our priorities and how are we gonna keep my workload reasonable so I can serve those priorities really well. And they still don’t do that.
They still aren’t willing to make that like meet you there then that is great clarity. I’m not saying [00:19:00] that means you have to leave. I understand that this, you know, job market is super wacky. I’m not saying that you have to leave and I totally just really hear me on that, but if you stay, there’s still that crucial mental shift that’s happened.
Once you hear that answer, and I hope this shift happens for you, if you do have to hear that answer, is you realize that under their rules you cannot win. Again, you cannot do an impossible workload just because they tell you to. So you make up your own rules about what a win could look like for you, like living in integrity with yourself, delivering really well, helping you feel confident.
What do you envision doing at the end of the day that would help you, like, make you feel proud of your work, even if you can’t satisfy the totally impossible workload? Along those lines, you kind of decide what you’re gonna prioritize and what you’re gonna put on the, like if I get to a list. You also realize that working all the time, 24 7 would still probably mean you’re not gonna get it all done.
So you stop trying. [00:20:00] You draw your workday boundaries because again, you have to, because you are still not gonna win. Even if you kill yourself, you’re never gonna get it all done. And so you might as well give yourself the realistic capacity. Do the best that you can during that time, but then draw those boundaries so that the rest of your life is protected.
I hope it releases you from things like being tied constantly to email. I just think that it really helps you kind of own your time a little bit more. If they’re not gonna look out for you, then you do not need to sacrifice your life for them. You start protecting more time for networking, perhaps maybe drop searching, just so that whenever you decide it’s time to leave, you are in pretty good shape on that front, or at least in better shape than maybe you have been.
I find that also, you know, when we’ve been so overworked that all that kind of stuff is the first to go networking, even friendships, things like that. And so just not necessarily leaving, but making time for those things again and looking out for yourself on that front again, can be really, really smart.[00:21:00]
And again, I just think it’s easier to do that when you don’t feel this kind of overblown sense of loyalty to your employer. You might have felt that way before and that’s fine. Well, many of us have done that, but. When that dissipates and hopefully disappears a bit because of the way that they are treating you.
Again, good people could treat you this way. Then you just stop sacrificing yourself for them and looking out for yourself a little bit more. I love this line from Taylor Swift. I don’t even know if she meant it this way, but this is how I hear it. She says, putting someone first only works when you’re in their top five and.
If you figure out you are not in their top five of top priorities of things to look out for, which you’re not, if they’re trying to not help you have your workload be reasonable, then you stop making them your number one. And I think that that in and of itself can be very, very freeing. And that’s why I really believe, you know, boundaries work, even when they don’t quote unquote, [00:22:00] they really do work even when you get the answer that you don’t want.
Okay. To recap where we are before I make my final point is again. Don’t assume the work that is being given to you is reasonable or even possible. It’s up to you to manage your workload and make sure it’s reasonable to do that. Number two, you need a system to help you know how to do that. Again, for me, bright method for you could be totally something else.
Point three is I hope in this process of these conversations, you prioritize solutions that you want and that you’re excited about and that would drive your career forward and get you working with teams you wanna work with and all that kind of stuff. And that can really be awesome. And I say this because.
Taking control of managing your workload can be daunting. But when you start seeing the potential of how you could drive it, that’s exciting. And so I hope you see that. Number four is hopefully you get the answers that you’re looking for and your workload becomes more reasonable. But even if not, it is now data that you have that is really, really, really valuable.
And I hope that you see that, [00:23:00] that even if you don’t, even if you kind of see. Someone’s shown you their true colors of what they’re gonna do or not do to protect you. Then even if you can’t leave right now, you start making moves to protect your personal life more. Maybe set yourself up to late, move and leave later.
I. Whatever that looks like. Even starting to save finances, whatever it is, just having that kind of nudge of this is not the environment that’s getting me the life I want. And so what are small steps, but very meaningful steps as they add up over time that I could take to put myself in a good position to shift where I am spending so much time and energy.
And last point, there are obviously a lot of systemic issues that underlie a lot of this. My hesitation of always being so frank sometimes about it’s up to you to manage your workload, is that in some ways it can come off and in some ways is legitimately somewhat [00:24:00] blaming the victim, because I think that as a lot of working women, and definitely there’s so many different layers of this, we are victims to a system that we cannot control outside of ourselves in this culture.
There are systemic issues of even the 40 hour work week, discrimination in the workplace, the types of tasks that women and women of color are asked to do in the workplace. More administrative party planning, all that kind of stuff. I was gonna say something else. You know what I mean? There are a lot of systemic issues that prevent us from having the total control that we want over our workload.
And in a left’s nefarious way, there are business demands that make it, you know, there’s a lot of pressure to perform in different ways, and I think that we have more power to control our workload often than we realize. And I [00:25:00] also think we cannot wait for systemic change to get benefits and improvements in our life and to get us living closer to the life that we want.
Yes, there are systems that have to change, and in some ways this whole, you need to manage your workload thing can be inappropriately blaming the victim. And I just believe that we can’t wait and we’ve gotta exert the control we can. And I think we as women, often have more control than we realize. And so I just hope that all of this is a nudge to help you.
Get more control over your workload so that you are living a life that you are really excited about. And of course, work is gonna be crazy at different times and things like that. But overall, if you look at your year overall, I want you getting closer to a workload that feels good to you when you look at it across the board.
I wanted to share one thing that a woman wrote after taking the Bright Method program that I think really speaks to this. She said the bright method allowed me to get [00:26:00] clear on what my capacity was and see that I was totally overworked due to finally being clear about my workload and what that meant for my organization and having conversations with my boss.
I got promoted at work five months after the program ended. I got a large pay raise in title and less and deeper responsibilities. All the work that kept me from doing the important work got taken off my plate. I can now focus on the things that will make a huge impact on my organization, and it’s the stuff I like to do.
I enjoy going to work again, and I feel like I’m making a difference instead of putting out urgent but not important fires every day and never getting to the things that matter. Now, obviously that is awesome that she got a promotion and a pay raise and obviously I, I can’t like guarantee that at all if people take the Bright Method program, but what I want you to hear is even setting that stuff aside, she was able to get clarity about her own capacity, her own workload, and bring her workload down into something that was more reasonable and more fulfilling and enjoyable for [00:27:00] herself.
And I just share it because I think that we don’t always see that that is possible. And I want you to hear from women where it is. There is real power in getting clarity around your time, your capacity, your workload, and all of that, and it is weird how much of this can flow out of a simple system like using a calendar to make your activities more visual and objective.
If you would like to try out the system for free, I have a free five day program. It’s called The Reset and Refresh. You get video lessons sent to you each day for five days that walk you through some main pillars of the Bright Method. You can check it out at kelly nolan.com/refresh. You can also DM me the word refresh on Instagram and my robo assistant will send you the link.
It’ll give you a great taste of the bright method and help you understand if it’s for you. Alright. Thank you for being here and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
