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.

Second the advice above...

Say no to meetings as much as you can. If you have to be there, ask for your slot to go at the beginning, do your stuff and leave. Or send an e-mail to the other attendees with your update and apologies. Most meetings are unnecessary and a drain on productivity.

Look at your deadlines and schedule the time necessary for work / actions in your outlook calendar. If necessary mark it as private so no one else can see the details but they know you're busy and can't invite you to more meetings.

Schedule time to look at emails. Like pp said - less than 2 minutes? Do it know. More? Schedule it as a task.

Hope you can get on top of it. You sound like you are about to break.

I could have written your email a few months ago. The suggestions of take time off have made me chuckle. I tried that and every single day I ended up having to work for some of it. Things came a head, i arranged a meeting with HR director and told her everything. I told her I couldn't do this anyone and I need help to make a change.

Short term: you need to take control of your diary. So book phantom meetings with Mr Smith, and leave the office at those times for the meeting (if you book a room, great, or
Use a breakout space or coffee shop if that's possible.

Use auto-reply to set expectations. When I'm really busy and need peace to think through a problem (I'm also in analytics) then I turn on my OoO and say I've closed outlook to avoid distractions if it's urgent call me (without offering a number). Otherwise I will check them at 2 fixed times in the day. The key is to then close outlook. I've found people can cope with this once or twice a week (was a revelation).

Block time in your diary for work.

Reply to meeting invites that don't have a clear agenda, or clear requirement for you to be there with a tentative & ask for clarification why you need to attend.

My company have 3 key objectives for the current quarter. If I am asked to do something that doesn't fit into those objectives then I am entitled to refuse meetings / work.

Set up a backlog of tasks. Things people have asked for but you don't have time to do. That way you have a ready response: resource means this has been put in the backlog.

Finally consider getting something like a self journal from bestselfco (I don't work for them!). It helped me to focus on priorities and the bigger picture.

Finally, it's hard but you have wean yourself off work. I started with leaving laptop locked up at work. Moved on to turning off phone. Now I'm trying to stop thinking about work during time at home.

It hasn't been plain sailing. I found saying no to people the hardest. I also discussed with the senior team that long hours are a symptom of one of two problems: either you have too much work for one person, or you're inefficient. Either scenario requires management support.

I hope my long post is of some use.

No not Rach. But it does feel better to hear I'm not the only one who has faced the same challenges and they are fixable.

Lots of great tips for me to use and being much more ruthless with my time and putting a system in place will help to feel a little bit more in control.

Thanks all.

Can you work from home? This really helps. I work in a high pressured job too and found that while I may work longer hours from home, it’s less stressful because I can do them on my own terms to an extent.

Can you hire help for cleaning / laundary / childcare get others in the household to pull their weight? Men don’t have the right to leisure time if their wives don’t enjoy the same — if your DP gets time to do hobbies then he’s clearly not doing his bit.

This was me last year except I was part time but full on outside work with three kids and DH who was never there

Work was high pressure and insane and - this is crucial - I had no control - hence my stress. Lots of shitty admin plus my own job and i couldn’t cope - no one could.

Are you in financial services per chance? It really is a case of under resources teams to maximise shareholder and management profit and utterly counter productive as people just leave or go off sick

My GP signed me off for two weeks with a virus (she saw me close to burn out) and then I went back and said it had to change. My career was already shafted as I was part time so I figured it made no odds and it hasn’t and now I’m doing different work which is still full on but manageable

Life is literally too short to throw away to a badly managed corporate culture where people don’t give a shit.

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow - in financial services going part time is rarely worth it. Workloads are the same. It’s far better to go full time at an organisation that encourages work from home which means doing your research and asking the right questions at interview.

Well I’m part time in financial services and now work one day from home. It IS slowly changing. I manage my workload now but I learnt this the hard way by burning out.

Yes my career prospects are nil but I’m paid for part time work the same salary as if I was full time in the public sector

My company have 3 key objectives for the current quarter. If I am asked to do something that doesn't fit into those objectives then I am entitled to refuse meetings / work.

This is fab advice.

Basically, you need to care less.

Set your own 3 objectives stripped right back to the essentials and use them to bin off 50% of the emails / meetings you're getting dragged into.

TELL SOMEONE - this is a failure in your company, the higher ups need to know before they can help.

OP agree with all the advice here. I've been there except less specialised/possibly slightly less senior however stressed & constantly on the go.

It's awful & it will only get worse, so it's great you are taking time to evaluate changes. I ended up being signed off work for several months with MH issues before I did that

Speak to your manager - offer solutions & ideas linking this to you performing your objectives better, adding more value etc. Can you change your peer/collaborative relationships so you get clear actions as opposed to bring CC'd. Can you educate people on your skills & role so you are pulled into less things?

Create good habits & stick to them. Don't work/read emails out with work, it's incredibly hard at first but it will help create headspace. Turn off email pop up notifications & close your email application during admin times. You will notice a difference in productivity as it's easy to waste time half-reading emails while doing tasks. Start the day with a to do list & stuck to it. If necessary regularly put on your out of office to manage expectations

Create time for self-care. My therapist advised I found a minimum of 30 mins per day. What I did had to bring me joy or relax me. So instead of reading emails on the train I would read a book or listen to a podcast. At home once the DC were in bed I would do some mindfulness or meditate