Just once
Just a quick sanity break before, well, my sanity breaks.
I appreciate that people set deadlines, or else nothing would get done. I can appreciate that they set aggressive deadlines, so that we can do more and sooner.
Because in my business, every moment you’re not making a sale, you’re losing business. Period, end of story.
But setting aggressive deadlines on maxed-out workers isn’t a good strategy. Because some of us will literally kill ourselves trying. And I’m not just talking about myself … I have a friend I have to remember every time I’m ready to throw yams, who has to produce on command like I do.
And that’s the thing, our jobs ARE deadline-driven. We already have plenty. The extra stuff thrown in there cannot, then, be as urgent as the urgent stuff. And that’s the problem — it’s usually MORE urgent. Or, at least, it becomes a crisis because Urgent is Everywhere and Nothing Can Be Moved to the Non-Urgent List.
What irks the fuck out of me more than the deadlines themselves is that at least once a month, I stay awake all night to finish something that is Beyond the Realm of the Job. Whether I’ve worked all night or I only got two hours of sleep because of the stress, I bust my ass to turn my shit in.
And then there’s always someone I have to go through who doesn’t share that ethic. Who not only goes to lunch but who dares to take a vacation day or work on other stuff, stuff that is NOT what I ran my health into the ground for.
I don’t get to take time off. And I have a lot of non-job-related functions that HAVE to take priority, too because KEEPING money is just as important as making it. So I’m lucky that nobody really gives me too much grief when I miss their occasionally lofty deadlines.
But man, just once I would like to not be operating in a state of absolute and utter crisis, every minute of every day.