
Being overwhelmed at work can be both terrible and wonderful. Terrible, in the sense that it wrings all the fun out of the job, because of the long hours at work, and the sleepless nights spent mentally picking through all the tasks undone. But being overwhelmed is wonderful in the sense that it provides the clearest possible proof that only your dedication and stellar performance protects your employer from catastrophes in the marketplace, and the otherwise inevitable bankruptcy.
So if you want to feel important, being overwhelmed is definitely for you. Here are six tips for creating an overwhelming feeling of being overwhelmed.
- Say yes to everything
- Whenever anybody asks for anything, drop whatever you're doing and do as they ask, even if what they want isn't part of your actual job. Although this takes time you could use to do your job, you also lose time trying to get back to doing whatever you were doing before you were interrupted. If you can't drop whatever you were doing, promise to fill the request "as soon as I can," and add it to the clutter already clogging your brain.
- Set each task's priority to "Extremely Urgent"
- Being discriminating If you want to feel important,
being overwhelmed is
definitely for youabout priorities focuses your mind and your effort on a single item, which helps you complete tasks quickly. We definitely don't want that. It interferes with feeling overwhelmed. Setting all task priorities to "Extremely Urgent" prevents your focusing on any one task. - Spend too much time on things you like to do
- Dawdling over tasks you enjoy is actually a form of procrastination. It helps you defer everything else, and since you're doing something semi-constructive, you don't experience the anxiety and guilt that accompanies straightforward procrastination.
- Refuse to use any tools that could make you more efficient
- In some instances, tools are available to eliminate work, or to make work more efficient. Don't learn how to use them. If you already know how to use them, and you can't figure out how to forget, think of good excuses to avoid using them. Examples: the tool is buggy; it produced wrong results on April 10, 2003, so I never use it; the user interface keeps changing; it doesn't run in my operating system; whatever.
- Do other people's work for them
- When people ask you how to do something, don't tell them how. Instead, do it for them. You don't want them to learn, because then they won't ask you anymore, which decreases your sense of importance.
- Underestimate the time required to complete tasks
- Underestimates serve two purposes. First, they create the illusion that you have time enough to take on additional tasks. Second, they help you believe that you can meet impossible deadlines. Both illusions are important to maintaining a state of being overwhelmed.
I have several more suggestions, but I don't want to overwhelm you. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Cognitive Biases at Work:
The Rhyme-as-Reason Effect
- When we speak or write, the phrases we use have both form and meaning. Although we usually think of
form and meaning as distinct, humans tend to assess as more meaningful and valid those phrases that
are more beautifully formed. The rhyme-as-reason effect causes us to confuse the validity of a phrase
with its aesthetics.
Contribution Misattribution
- In teams, acknowledging people for their contributions is essential for encouraging high performance.
Failing to do so can be expensive. Three patterns of contribution misattribution are especially costly:
theft, rejection/transmigration, and eliding.
Cognitive Biases at Work
- Cognitive biases can lead us to misunderstand situations, overlook options, and make decisions we regret.
The patterns of thinking that lead to cognitive biases provide speed and economy advantages, but we
must manage the risks that come along with them.
Some Perils of Reverse Scheduling
- Especially when time is tight, project sponsors sometimes ask their project managers to produce "reverse
schedules." They want to know what would have to be done by when to complete their projects "on
time." It's a risky process that produces aggressive schedules.
Unrecognized Bullying: III
- Much workplace bullying goes unrecognized because of cognitive biases that can cause targets, perpetrators,
bystanders, and supervisors of perpetrators not to notice bullying. The Halo Effect and the Horn Effect
are two of these biases.
See also Cognitive Biases at Work and Cognitive Biases at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming March 12: Embedded Technology Groups and the Dunning-Kruger Effect
- Groups of technical specialists in fields that differ markedly from the main business of the enterprise that hosts them must sometimes deal with wrong-headed decisions made by people who think they know more about the technology than they actually do. Available here and by RSS on March 12.
And on March 19: On Lying by Omission
- Of the many devious strategies of workplace politics, deception is among the most commonly used. And perhaps the most commonly used tactic of deception is lying. Since getting caught in a lie can be costly, people try to lie without lying. Available here and by RSS on March 19.
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