Work chaos and craziness
It was no coincidence that crazymakers were a big topic in this week's chapter of the AW. Work has been insanely crazy for the last couple weeks. A bit of background - I work three (official) days a week doing IT for 4 clients in and around the SF bay area. I see one client Monday and half of Thursday, and the rest of the clients in the pieces I have left.
I don't do this on my own - I work for a company that has seven people on staff doing this and a couple of the clients I share, but the part that I need to do seems to be especially crazy and the CEOs of two of my clients are Crazymakers with a capital C.
I was thinking about Crazymakers yesterday as I did my morning pages at 1PM...again they'd interrupted my Friday off...again I was stressed out from working late on a unresolvable issue the night before.
So I re-read the bit on Crazymakers and when I got to the bit where Julia writes that I am involved with them because I'm crazy too and it's a way to stay blocked, well, it got me.
Okay, fine, I'm still blocked, but what am I resisting. One or two seconds after I asked myself this question I realized that buying into the crazyness of work means I don't have to do MY project. It means that I have a grand and noble excuse in the world where workaholism is revered.
I used to be such a good workaholic, but now I am a resentful workaholic as I realize my number one issue is I don't know how to say no. I also volunteer to do things that aren't going to help me in the slightest because I know they need to be done, but doing them steals time from my days off...which means it steals Julie time and time with my daughter and husband.
Must be time for me to learn this lesson. It must be.
Perhaps what I need to do is work on that auto-yes response. Before I say yes, before I volunteer, maybe I need to take that second and breathe, check in, and see if I really can do it. See what the cost is if I say yes, if I volunteer.
Anyone have any ideas? Is anyone else a recovering "yes" to everyone except themselves?
posted by Julie @ 12:10 PM
2 Comments:
Ah -- my trick, learned years ago -- and yes, it did change me -- was to *always* say "Let me get back to you on that, I need to think about it."
I always gave a specific time -- tomorrow, on Friday, whatever -- as long as it's at least 24 hours away. And I did get back to them.
Also, no excuses. I don't need to explain a refusal. Sorry, other commitments -- that's more than sufficient.
Good luck!
Thanks! Let me get back to you is definitely not what they want to hear, but to me it's easier than saying no outright. I will give it a shot!
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