How can I stop overcommitting and seeming incompetent in a new role?

[CollectingAllTheACEs]

Please help me to stop looking incompetent in my new role! It's not a new role as such as I'd been doing in elsewhere in a different service for the past three years, just now moved into supporting a different team (Band 8a NHS non-clinical, non staff management).

I've always been a people pleaser and hate saying no to people as I feel like I'm letting them down and also letting myself down by not doing what's asked of me. Because of this, and because I worked for a very demanding boss in my last role and was also job sharing with someone who didn't pick up their share of the work, I ended up working every night (unpaid overtime), working weekends, etc. just to get stuff done. I promised myself that in the new role I wouldn't be like that. Plus I'm trying to date someone new and actually work in a second job Friday and Saturdays (I do compressed hours in my main role) so don't actually have the free time to put the work in. (Single and live alone, unsurprisingly)

But this new job is just so REACTIONARY - it's just constant needing everything right now, nothing is ever planned in. Take this week for example - I had a paper sprung on me late last week for NHS England that needed to be done for a meeting Wednesday morning, so I spent some time at the weekend and then Monday and Tuesday night completing it given that it was something very important. It's gone for review at the Board today. I had another piece of work that I've promised would be done today - no problem I think, I've got all of today to write it.

They've been giving me feedback on the other paper via email ALL DAY. And it needs drastically changing. And it needs drastically changing RIGHT NOW. Bearing in mind it's supposed to be my day off tomorrow and I'm working 11-4 elsewhere and I have a shitload of housework to do. So now I'll have to go to the other manager and say sorry no can do, this takes priority. Which reflects badly on me.

I know I'm posting on MN when I could be doing the report but I needed five minutes to stop and think and have a coffee.

FFS I DONT WANT TO BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME. It's all well and good me working on saying no but I'm trying to progress in my career at the same time...

I didnt want to read and dash. There will be others who will have focussed advice.
I had exactly the same kind of role for YEARS and developed a few trackers to communicate my workload and planning to my boss etc. Not sure if it really worked but it was logical evidence of how I managed priorities. We had either a meeting or I emailed a spreadsheet every few weeks with a list of the top priorities. He used that info to push back when other folk queried missed deadlines etc.

The second paper due today. Just tell the Manager or whoever asked for it. That it was displaced by a board paper rewrites. They really will understand as everyone knows where they are in the organisations pecking order.
Renegotiate when the second paper is REALLY needed. DO NOT WORK YOUR DAYS OFF its not sustainable and only needed in true life or death scenarios.

Use and communicate a priority tracker. Make sure your manager knows what it contains. Its probable that you will need to describe competing priorities again at some point. And ask them to decide what is not done.

PS Id forgotten that I would have my prioritised list estimate how many days effort required to complete the tasks. A three month plan.
Any new work either displaced something on the 3 month list or the requester was told that work would not commence for at least 3 months. Id let my director fight it out with other directors to agree between them what I should do.
I had a role supporting legal compliance for a high hazard operations. Everything was important and not enough of me to go round. There comes a point that someone else has to decide organisational priorities.

EDIT this approach shows that you are planning and managing resource. Hence not incompetent!

I can see you posted this ages ago @CollectingAllTheACEs and I hope you've found a way forward since then. I think it
is a bit spooky that this thread popped out at me today because I also work in the NHS and I have also been stuck on this same issue lately. (I didn't know that whatever algorithm suggests stuff to you on here was actually telepathic). If you've found anything that works for you, please please come back and share!

My own thoughts (and this is very much a 'do as I say, not as I do' scenario) are these:

1. Most people asking you to do stuff won't know what other people have asked you to do. Everyone just sees their own thing and their own needs. Therefore if you have committed to a thing, block the time out in your diary and put an out of office on saying you won't be checking emails until x o'clock. Treat it like you're on an away day at a mountain retreat with no wifi.

2. If you're asked to do a thing that is supposedly super important and super urgent, but which isn't actually an unpredictable emergency in which lives might be at stake... still pause before saying yes to it. If it were THAT important, wouldn't the person who knew about it have sorted that shit out already rather than waiting for a few days before the deadline? And if they didn't sort it earlier, surely that is their mistake and it is on them if it is not done? Are they just using you to cover for their own error?

3. In general, don't say yes to ANYTHING right away, ever. You need thinking time. Never reply to an email request without sitting on it for half an hour first. If they're talking to you face to face, use the old 'I need to consider this for a moment' or 'let me think about whether I can make that work.' From the moment you say yes, it becomes your responsibility and your failure if it isn't done. The push back must come at the moment of the request, not later on when you've agreed to make it your problem and set up the expectation that you've got this.

4. Don't set yourself deadlines to have something fully done by if you don't need to. Suggest instead that you will share an update on your progress by xyz time. And never set yourself a 'by the end of the day' deadline because as you've highlighted, you can never predict what the day will bring. Also: no one reads stuff at the end of the day anyway so you're not even adding value with this one (unless they're over-working like you are, in which case you're just feeding the beast of unreasonable expectations for everyone).

All. Easier. Said. Than. Done.

Good luck!