Thrashing

What is important if everything is important?

Anyone who has worked in IT has been in this situation. You come in for the morning, make a beverage of your choice, planning out your day, and then you sit down at your computer.

Everything looks peace until you get that familiar *DING* It’s your boss or project manager and they have a very important task that can’t wait. These things happen from time to time.

An hour or so goes by and you manage to get the emergency request squared away. You are now an hour behind where you wanted to be but at least you’re able to get back on track.

*DING*

There’s another emergency request that needs to be taken care of today. This task seems to take longer than anyone expected and now two more hours have gone by. You aren’t done with this task yet but-

*DING*

Someone needs your help really quick to help with an unrelated task.

So much for getting any planned work done today.

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These kinds of days happen. It’s an unfortunate reality of chasing “Quick Wins” at the cost of productivity. Some people thrive in scenarios like this where the environment or workload changes constantly. Others do better when they have a degree of planning and are allowed to think through situations before acting.

I have seen this in businesses of all sizes and the effect it has on the individuals and teams subjected to it. It’s demoralizing, causes doubt, and in my opinion erodes faith in leadership.

My teammates and I all feel the effects of this. We’ve had conversations about it both in private and as a team. In case you ever wondered if this is in your head, it’s likely not. Other departments have mentioned that the rate of work that we do in IT is so high that they would never want to do it. It is vindicating but still is difficult to go through.

Now I hear you wondering, yes this is something I deal with regularly. What can I do about it?

Like so many problems in the business world, there’s not a one size fits all answer. But here are some things to keep in mind.

• Communication
• Cover yourself with documentation
• Remember that you are capable

Communication

I know that one comes up a lot in my advice but it’s true. Don’t suffer in silence. Even if it’s difficult it needs to be brought up with your supervisor or manager. It can be framed like “the constant changing of priority tasks is keeping me from doing my best work.”

It just needs to get the idea started, as long as someone knows that something is wrong, that is the first step to getting it fixed.

Cover Yourself

If priorities keep shifting, eventually someone is going to get the blame when all these priority tasks aren’t completed. If someone asks you to stop what you are doing to work on something else get that documented in an email or instant message that you can track.

Say that you need it to help organize the tasks you are working on. Or that you need a ticket to get it started, then they can send you the ticket and priority information.

This way when someone asks you why Priority Task 8 wasn’t complete, you have something you can show them that it’s because you were told to do something else instead.

Remember that you are capable

This goes a little on the personal side, but the constantly changing priorities along with the never shrinking pile of work that still needs to get done can really do a number on your self confidence. When you sign in and do a weeks worth of work but you only closed 8 tickets this week.

If you’re like me and you thrive on being able to plan things out and focus on tasks then trashing can also be a stepping stone to self doubt. It sounds silly but when you are having a tough time try to remember the things that you have done well. What was the last big challenge that you handled? Did you do something recently that no one else could do?

You’re in your position because you are the best person for that role. Don’t let mismanagement get you to doubt your own personal worth. This is the fault of management, not you being bad at what you do.

If you need some positivity today, consider checking out the Krill Waves stream from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.