Managing stress work/family/life

[Maybe83]

I am so close to reaching burn out.

Highly stressful job not enough hours in the day I am completely all over the place with. No system constant fire fight deadlines just met or missed constantly.

Its severely impacting my family life I am exhausted and equally messing up at home. Struggling with scheduling house no order. Marriage feeling the strain as I am like a would up coil every single day. Guilt is pretty much my defining feeling at the minute. Guilt for not being present at home even when I m here and guilt for being so overwhelmed in work!

I can't relax my mind is pretty much in work 24hrs a day.

It's like a house of cards about to come down. Life is moving a 100 miles an hour and I feel like mine is just passing me buy.

How have your taken back control and unbalanced? I need to make drastic changes and quickly.

No system constant fire fight deadlines just met or missed constantly

When you say "no system", how do you prioritise and what level are you at - is the lack of system systemic (and therefore difficult to change) or is it that you personally need a better way of structuring tasks, deadlines and responsibilities?

Is it a season of stress, so particularly bad right now but will ease off, or is is permanently this way?

. It's a shitty way to feel.

I changed jobs. I went into a job/company where I could either continue to climb the career ladder or could let off the pressure and coast. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

In the end I chose coasting. I get paid a decent amount for not a lot of work. But I know my salary won't increase unless I up my game. But right now I can't. I need the break from pressure. Unfortunately it's still fairly long hours (out the house 8-7) but I almost never think about work at home and that is worth it's weight in gold.

My breaking point was when work stress made me cry every night from 3am until 8am when I left for work. My DC were so confused and upset. I just couldn't put them through it anymore

Combination of systematic and me struggling to establish any order in the chaos of it.

To put it in context I have probably 5 hrs without meeting so far this week. Thats is good. I have approx 4 hours in the next two days.

Every meeting needs more actions. Poor defined work flows. It's a specialist role. Mixture of analytics and part of business owner team responsible for delivery of large project. Very high level business impact.

It's chaos most days to be honest. I am a ball of stress before i even get out of bed. I keep bursting into tears.

It's feels like I have so much on I can't think straight. Self care is out the window.

This has spilled into my home life. I am forgetting things no energy and on and on it goes.

no job is worth making yourself ill, because you do need to be fit to work, to support your family and to have a life.

some how you have to pull back on the work, try to look for ways you can. tell your line management you are burning out because if you don't you will, then you will be signed off sick, and you'll have no choice but to.

This is how I did it. Managament were fully aware of the stress I was under prior to my crash, then I did and was signed off for three months. That's how bad it was.

What would I have done differently in the 6 weeks run up to my crash.

Told my boss, and then seen my GP and explain how I was feeling, book every Wednesday off. why Wednesday? middle of the week, you get the stressful Monday Tuesday over and done with, try to relax on Wednesday and then back Thursday Friday. Be strong and stop doing the work on your days off and evenings. If you have to work in your free time something has gone drastically wrong at work, with resource allocation.

I had to deal with a difficult home situation too, I was constantly getting calls from schools and agencies about mental health & addiction issues at home with OH. I ended up spread thin and I broke.

If home is causing you difficulties and work isn't try to get friends and family to help you, do the same as I said about work, tell them, ask them. Speak with all the agencies you have to such as school let them know what you are facing the welfare teacher and principle should be able to offer help and advice regarding your children.

If your having the difficulties at home try to come up with some way to get out of the house and distract yourself.

Overall your community, friend family work colleagues need to know, then you can ask that network to help you.

Unfortunately. this is all very tough thing to do, but as you are reaching out about burn out, you need to reduce the flame, the only way you can do it is ask for help.

And people will help. You also need to start planning to change or something will break.

Take 2 days off. Get stuff sorted at home, washing etc and then have a bath and some time to just think.

What support can be put into place at work? Can you go to your boss /director level?

But take some time off first!!

You need to book time off! I was in the same position about a year ago, I took two weeks off & never went back. It was like a lightning bolt hitting me, why was I killing myself for someone who didn’t care about me or how much my family life was suffering.

I eventually found something else with much less stress & I can’t espress how much happier we all are. I am not saying that’s for you but it will help one way or he other.

OK - are all the meetings critical?

Perhaps you cannot reschedule this week, but next week take a really good look at all the meetings and see what can be bumped.

Can you take Friday to work from home? Tell your boss you urgently need a day without distractions to get up to date and to make a plan.

The first thing you need to do is write down everything on your mind.

Absolutely everything - from the email you need to send to the cat food you need to buy or the playdate you owe so-and-so or the critical research for Very Important Work Thing or the haircut you need.

Write it all down in a massive brain dump - no prioritising, no angst over what’s important or not essential. If it’s anywhere in your mind, write it down. It will be a long list.

Can I just say this is like reading my own mind as it is so similar to my own situation. My boss is making me chuck a sickie tomorrow because I have cried and cried all day.

I have an out potentially but it is back to a job that potentially doesn't stimulate me whereas this one really does. But what use is that when I have no life? So no tips but a hug of solidarity.

I take it you have tried to rectify the situation at work? Is anyone supporting you? If so, how?

I left a job at the beginning of the year as it dawned on me that I was struggling and absolutely no one had my back. I felt like I was walking in treacle, was knackered, didn't have the time or energy for me. In theory, it should have been a great opportunity but once I had established that no one cared about me I handed my notice in.

Have since gone on to get a job in a completely unrelated field and work with an amazing bunch of colleagues in a job that is manageable. I feel normal again.

I'm going to book some time off I think and keep my laptop of outside work.

I don't really feel like I do have any one to talk to. Every one round me seems to be in the position to varying degrees.

1. Make a list of everything I need to do. (It will be long) and really think about my out side work stuff as I haven't focused on any of that in so long.
2. Schedule work from home.
3. Block calender and clear as many meetings as I can.

Leaving at present isn't an option but I think I might seriously consider it in the new year.

How do others manage to organise themselves in work? A diary? Deal with 100's of emails and prioritise.

I think the panic is lack of plan at work and at home.

I am going to plan something with my family over the weekend and my self.

Do you think you are ineffective (unable to manage because of lack of experience/capability) or do you have a massive workload?

IME there is a fine balance between having a job that is interesting, stretches you but is manageable and a job that is overwhelming. Lots of people have far too much to do these days.

Slightly different role now but I used to organise myself by proactively planning ahead and adding everything to the calendar. So, very basically...... Look at calendar for today. Is there anything outstanding that needs to be done? Tomorrow, what needs finishing off for tomorrow's meetings? Day after, what needs doing? Day after that and after that and after that? Go as far ahead in the calendar as you can, chipping away at things. Board Meeting in two weeks time? Oh yes, I need to email the team for feedback on the new IT system. Give them a deadline of a week so you've got time to double check stuff and pull the info together.

Save every single nugget of contact information in Outlook Contacts. You never know when you need to refer back to stuff.

Also, I wouldn't suffer in silence. Who is your Line Manager? Speak to them. If they aren't aware of what's happening and you crash and burn then you're going to look a bit daft/not be taken particularly seriously.

In terms of the emails, what type of things are you receiving? The email traffic in my old job was insane as I received my own emails and the forwarded incoming and outgoing emails of two directors (who were incredibly poor at communicating with me/deleted emails before I managed to see them when I was dipping in and out of their inbox).

You can set up filters on your inbox so that certain emails bypass the inbox and go straight into dedicated folders. This is invaluable for newsletter, status updates and calendar notifications and emails that you don't need to deal with immediately.

To much work load.

I receive 100 +emails a day. Cc'd is big in my job but not great at active identification as to the purpose of the email. So you could be cc'd but have an action but due to my role most will require a response immediately or short term follow up action by me. Plus most days I spend 4-5 hrs a day in meetings. I had a half an hour free on Monday.

My previous job I had an extremely high workload but no way near as stressful as I could carve out actual work time and had a system. This is just s free for all most days.

I will speak to my manager. And stop worrying about it at home.

Having monitored lots of inboxes, I'm afraid to say that 100+ emails a day is not unusual. Not saying that is right of course....

The most effective way to manage your inbox is to start at the top and work your way through one by one. Scan it, record any information you need to keep, reply with answer or reply to say that you will check and come back shortly, ignore and then delete, archive or save to follow up. If something wasn't relevant to me, I would often reply to people and ask them not to copy me on said topic.

I never filed emails. I never had time! If I potentially needed to refer back to email, I chucked it in an archive file. The search on Outlook is pretty good.

Have felt completely overwhelmed before so know exactly where you are coming from when you say that you can't think straight/feel out of control. You can't stay in that mode for long or you are going to keel over.

One thing I also did when I was cc'ed into large emails but had an action was to open the email and do a keyword search. I used this a lot to quickly scan through docs and pick out information/jump to relevant information.

The snipping tool also allows you to capture information on your screen without having to retype stuff.

Anyway, not sure if any of that was any help but good luck! Let us know how you get on.

I’ve so been there - it’s a hideous way to live and I’ve ended up just taking time off with stress related illness because I went too far into the chaos. Things that helped me were:-

• having a triage process for emails. I’d check them once every 90 mins if I was at my desk all day or twice a day if I had back to back meetings. If I could respond to it within 2 minutes, I’d do it there and then, otherwise they went into either a pending folder or a reading folder for later.
• I physically book out admin time in my diary, so if I have a particular task or need space to action stuff in a meeting, I’ll book out an appointment for the time I think it will take so no one can book me into a meeting. If I’m invited to a meeting, I can’t make it so they either reschedule or do it without me.
• I started each day with a to do list, emails that needed action but can’t be done in two minutes get added to the list as a task, which I then book out time in my diary for.
• I bounced back anything that didn’t belong to me - so if I’m copied in to an email, my assumption is that it’s for information only and I don’t look for actions for me, it’s too easy for folk to involve you in stuff without directly asking or having a conversation. If it doesn’t sit with my role, I don’t pick it up.
• don’t do work at home. Ever. When you’re feeling so overwhelmed, keep work physically at work.
• focus on self care - by which I mean have an attitude of care for yourself. Think about what you need and give yourself it, whether that’s a cup of tea in peace in the morning, a day in your diary without meetings or a week off to rock in a corner... look after yourself.

Those things really helped me get a grip on a runaway workload, and stopped me blaming myself for not managing the unmanageable.

Been there. You need to block off some time in your calendar each day to actually get stuff done. Otherwise it will just fill with meetings and you have no time in between for actions. Make sure you have at least 2 hours a day blocked out to get your emails read and work on your to do list. People won't invite you to meetings at these times if your calendar shows as busy

You need to be a lot more ruthless with your time and the work you take on. As women we are programmed to say yes and end up taking on things we shouldn't or don't have capacity for.

As an example, you have 100 emails a day. That means you spend 2 hours reading and 3 hours responding/doing what's required to those emails. You have a 9 hour day, so that leaves you with 4 hours left for your other work. Block time off in your calendar for your emails and responding to them. Say no to meetings as much as you can. Force those inviting you to a meeting to shorten them. I often say I can attend but I only have 15mins so can my stuff go first and then leave. This also prevents others from dumping work on me.

In the meantime as PP said, take a week off and rest.

Rach is that you? You sound like one of my colleagues. Total nightmare unsustainable situation. It's not worth it. It doesn't feel like there is any way out but there is. Tell your manager you'll quit if it doesn't get better fast. And mean it. Hope it does get better soon, I've been there and it's awful.

Is this short term pain or always going to be the same? If the latter it's worth finding a way to manage it - if it's not (or you're Rach) then make a plan to get away, no job is worth it.

The most important thing for me when I was in a similar - but short term - situation was being brutally honest with myself about what was my job and what really wasn't. I responding to emails or in meetings because I had an opinion (I have lots of opinions!) or because other people knew I'd help them get things done.
So I attended meetings that were not best use of my time and responded to emails when I didn't "need" to. Cutting back is hard but makes a huge difference.

Meetings - are you likely to pick up actions because you're there? Don't go - ask someone to explicitly let you know the actions that need doing for your actual job. Everything else say no - chances are they'll find someone else who is in the meeting.

Email - ask yourself 'is it my fight' and if it's not, ignore it. You may care passionately about whether the answer is 'blue' or 'red' but if it's not your job to make that decision then channel your inner Elsa and let it go...

At home sit everyone done and say this is the situation for X weeks. You're sorry if you aren't available for everything but you need to focus here. Then work out what's most important and who can help with the rest. I went to swimming every week for my DD she hated it, so wanted me there. But dance, she loved and her friends mum was more than happy to help out. Weekends we cut back on social stuff but again it was short term.

Good luck cos its fucking shit, when it's that stressful.

Shit typing from me but you get the drift... still not learnt to stop multitasking...