does this go here? always improving

[Zoe Girl]

This is kinda about work and kinda about relationships, but bottom line about realizing what painful thing I am avoiding terribly.

Currently I am really struggling to be on time with all my work deadlines. I am also struggling with paying 100% of the bills on time. There are practical reasons such as 4 different confusing payroll date and a time clock that does not work and no support to get it to work, on the bills I am looking at 7 days late on several hundred due to me and double that late by at least 2 weeks. It seems however I have a mental glitch and I have seen a counselor for a year to deal with just this, but am taking a break since I felt better. Still I split my thinking between saying I have a problem and thinking the problem is that I am not superhuman.

Past life, I recall trying so hard to get things done, keep priorities and just do a good job. My mom's opinion of my house seems reasonably important in my life. One visit many years ago I worked really hard to get everything clean so when she came we could just do some relaxing things. She pulled me aside privately and told me she and my dad were ashamed of me because of the stains in my carpet from my little kids and juice. I went on an excuse for an errand and called a friend and was hysterical basically. She has been milder since then but she is not happy until she finds something to fix or tell me off about.

So here is the deal, I can handle being late on things. I can handle being in a staff meeting and knowing they are talking about me when we discuss something being late. I know at some point I need to get it all done, there are reasons, and I didn't. I almost can even handle the comment that we are 'exempt' so we don't get to stop at 40 hours from a single person with no kids (we went from hourly to exempt with no pay increase as well). But what throws me over the edge is hearing 'what can we improve' when I actually get it all done. So I think I am not getting everything done semi-consciously because I am not tearing up at work this year and I would lose it to hear that 'how can we improve' if I just put in loads of extra hours and hit every deadline.

Okay now to figure out a meditation to just let this be, I accept it but protecting myself against inevitable hurt is difficult.

[SteveinMN]

In my experience, the 'we' in "how can we improve?" was always that imperial "we" -- the questioner never seemed to include themself in assessing what could be improved upon, and suggestions that the constrictions existed at least in part at their level or higher were met with feigned surprise or a stony look. :treadmill:

I do understand the importance of process improvement; there is value in analyzing the steps involved in achieving something and determining what can be improved upon. But I don't take the question seriously unless all applicable levels of the organization take a stake in it.

I know you haven't asked for advice, Zoe, but I will offer some. I'll refund double what you paid for it if you don't like it. :) I would seriously think about what you might be able to do beyond brute-forcing hours into the week to streamline the tasks that generally seem to take you lots of time. The problem may be that you need more training with something. Or someone else is habitually late with info you need and you've been too nice to call them on their tardiness. Or ... any of a million things. There is some interest in your organization's part in asking how things could be improved because more work is coming all the time and it eventually will not be possible to simply throw more hours at it.

So don't take the request too seriously. But if there is some addressable reason why projects take you longer than they could, you now have an open door to bring up the possibilities. Good luck.

[Zoe Girl]

Thank you Steve, you always have good advice.

I think that our organization is going through total crap right now. There were 2 things on our schedule for yesterday that either got cancelled or not handled well and my staff showed up for. Not good. I know that a meeting was cancelled because we all had trouble getting our data done basically because we needed extra staffing to observe each other, and we are understaffed. I got a lot of pressure to get mine done and was not happy, then so many people could not get it done the meeting was postponed. I am not happy because I basically said that I could not be the only one who was not staffed for this and was told to get it done.

Right now it is a couple factors, one is changing things just to change them and not understanding how the systems work, ie I spend 4 hours shopping for my program materials rather than being able to order from the warehouse because a person decided it was just the same. Other things are a royal freakin mess of complication, 4 different payroll dates and 3 different systems.

So I think I will say to my sup that I will focus on every single deadline but the time will come from somewhere. Best I can do

[SteveinMN]

Right now it is a couple factors, one is changing things just to change them and not understanding how the systems work, ie I spend 4 hours shopping for my program materials rather than being able to order from the warehouse because a person decided it was just the same. Other things are a royal freakin mess of complication, 4 different payroll dates and 3 different systems.

So I think I will say to my sup that I will focus on every single deadline but the time will come from somewhere. Best I can do
Thanks for the kind words, Zoe!

Based on what you've written here, I do think it's time for some negotiation on your part.

At my old day job, I had to report my time in three systems. One was the corporate payroll system. Another was for "project time tracking" and broke down how long I spent on broad (but arbitrary) categories of work. The third was used to help estimate work effort for future (ostensibly similar) projects. Of course, I took the first system seriously. I used to fuss a little over the second system because the estimation was kind of derived from the third system, but was difficult to aggregate accurately when I spent 15 minutes on one task and 20 minutes on another task (which really was never mine anyway), but then I learned all my painstakingly-entered information didn't go anywhere. >8) From then on I just calculated rough percentages of my time. A 30-minute task took just five minutes and everybody was happy. I wasn't too fussy about system #3, either, because we saw truly duplicate projects about as often as we saw Halley's Comet. It just was not the nature of the job. So I compiled those numbers, but, again, didn't do a painstaking job of it because the future value of the information was quite low.

The point of that paragraph is to illustrate that it was possible to take a task times three and figure out where the value was rather than trying to honor them all equally by putting in extra time. They all had to be done or I would have my supervisor camped out at my desk. But they didn't all have equal value, to me or anyone else. I realize your situation is different; this is just an illustration.

And I think your approach of focusing on deadlines is a good one. If you make it clear to your supervisor that these are your priority and (s)he agrees, then you are doing the best you can do. But you have an opening here -- if it would be helpful to have someone work with you a time or two to streamline shopping for program materials, you are perfectly within rights to request that help -- or, as you have done, advise that acquiring programming will be slower because (quelle surprise!) at your street level, it is not identical to the previous process and, so, will require additional time to either learn or execute. Or both.

All the best...