Manage your workload proactively by establishing clear boundaries and limits on your capacity.
Utilize a poll-based system and a reverse to-do list to manage workload effectively.
Adjust your workload based on natural rhythms and make subtle changes in projects to avoid being overwhelmed.
Implement quota systems to break down work into specific tasks and effectively communicate capacity to take on additional work.
Quota systems in highly autonomous roles like professors can lead to more effective workload management and boundary setting. (Time 0:00:00)
Managing Workload Effectively
Summary:
Manage your workload proactively instead of waiting to be overwhelmed before saying no.
Establish clear boundaries and limits on your capacity. Implement a poll-based system to manage workload instead of a push-based system.
Utilize a reverse to-do list. Adjust your workload based on natural rhythms, like going easier in the summer.
Make subtle changes in the projects you take on to manage workload without drawing attention. Quiet quitting is reducing work output for a short period without being noticed.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It's up to you just to manage what's on your plate. People send you emails and you just say, yeah, sure, I'll do it. So what most people do, for example, is they wait until they feel really stressed. And then they say, all right, I have psychological cover to say no, because I'm so overwhelmed that I feel justified in taking the social capital hit for saying no. It's a terrible way to manage your workload. So you can be much more explicit about how you manage a workload. Here's how many slots I have. Oh, I've filled them. I mean, this is really sort of four hour work week style. Let's get in and write the systems for how we manage workload. You could go to a poll based system instead of a push based system. You can do reverse to do list. And there's a lot of things you can do to make sure that the amount of work on your plate doesn't get too large in a way that's fully compatible. Work at a natural pace. Well, there's organizational things you can do here so that you're not at full intensity, but you can also just do this yourself. You can titrate your workload. I go easier in the summer than I do in the rest of the year. And I can do this in a way that my employer doesn't notice. You know, it's pretty subtle in like what projects you take on or don't take on. You can quiet quit for two months. And no one notices. Whereas if you quiet quit for 20 months, people say, okay, wait a second. I know your worth is a human's not defined by your labor, but your worth to me as an employee is you got to do something, right?
Speaker 2
Quiet quitting is just not doing very much work. Right. (Time 1:00:48)
Implementing Quota Systems for Managing Workload
Summary:
Implementing quota systems can be an effective way for individuals in highly autonomous roles, such as professors, to manage their workload.
By breaking down work into specific tasks and setting quotas for each, individuals can maintain a balance and effectively communicate their capacity to take on additional work. This approach provides a clear boundary and requires others to challenge the set quota rather than the individual's availability, leading to more effective workload management.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The similar alternative to that for people in highly autonomous roles like mine is a professor writers quota systems. So that's more what I will lean into. Break up work into the different types of things I need to do. And quota, here's how many of these I do per semester. Here's how many of these I do at a time. The idea is I still hit the different areas of stuff that is part of my responsibilities, but it's cap. So if I have a quota as a professor for here's how many paper reviews I do per semester. When I hit that cap, I can now say to someone, hey, thanks for thinking about this. I do a lot of paper reviews. I like doing paper reviews. I've already hit my quota for the semester, however. So I can't take any more on this semester. This is really effective because for someone to push back against that, they basically just have to argue your quota is wrong. Well, whatever it is is wrong. You should be doing more, you know, as opposed to saying, I'm really busy, you know, I don't know if I have time and they're like, everyone's busy. It would be good for me if you would just do this. Yeah. (Time 1:04:35)
