Boss asking me to take on more work when I'm already snowed under

[Spinachandcheese]

Can imagine this is a common thing and has been asked a million times it's just I'm in a bit of burnout mode with life and not sure I can figure this out before tomorrow when it (probably) needs to be discussed to squash the bad vibes.

Disclaimer I have an autism diagnosis that I have never had much faith in but then here we go again I try to explain myself so that we can get clarity and a plan instead i get accused of being argumentative, which is always upsetting.

Miffed he didn't ask how things were going first and if I had capacity to take anything else on. Made out that I was behind because I'd had 'lots' of time off recently (like 3 days I think) when I could have easily got signed off with stress for a week but didn't want to do that to the others, and aside from the time off I haven't let this affect my work. He put the time off down as holiday. Didn't argue but it will probably cause issues later down the line when the kids are off school.

Anyway, my question is what's the best and normal way to deal with this please before I go in and just start crying and 'arguing'?

Sounds like communication between you, or maybe overall in your department, is pretty muddy.

It should be clear whether your days off were holiday booked in advance or due to stress-related illness, in which case they'd be covered by a doctor's note.

Are you snowed under because there is too much work or snowed-under because of overwhelm, which makes it hard to prioritise, get started, finish tasks, set a realistic workload for the day and move through it systematically? If it's overwhelm then you may need more time off to get your stress levels down. or support in scheduling your work.

But no one can manage a genuine overload of work. If the calls on you are unrealistic, you need to say no, and explain that there are not the hours in the day to complete current workload, let alone extra. There are so many stories of people leaving and their workload being divided up among existing staff. If anything like this is the case, then HR needs to look at employing an extra person.

Ask for a work review? Go through each piece, agree tasks and time frames for completion. That soon shows up what you have in front of you vs what your brain is doing when overwhelmed.

Thank you. Since I'm being systematic and prioritising etc (I'm an admin) already I believe it to be too much work, too few hours.

He thinks I don't understand prioritising (I practise this daily and thanks to a chat with a more helpful colleague know what's most important to the business) and that I can just catch up on the other stuff when it's quiet. It's rarely quiet at the minute hasn't been for at least a month. E.g. If I'm not effectively using my system of keeping track of things due to workload I can at times not know what's happening and it results in everything taking even longer as I have to check several things to get a grasp of what's going on rather than having all the info in one place. So what should be a simple email can take far too long in research time.

It just doesn't make sense to me to be asked to do significantly more work.

A work review sounds a good idea in theory but he thinks he knows what I do and that asking for more work out of me is reasonable. I'm going to have to disagree with him. Even asking for a review could be taken as me being argumentative.