[2023-05-11] Making the invisible visible
You're overwhelmed. Multiple people are assigning you work, oblivious to the other requests you're dealing with. Your boss is not available to help you set priorities. You're getting little direction but lots of critiques. You feel like you're flying solo and that there's no time to build relationships with your colleagues. You're convinced that you're in over your head and not up to the task.
This is normal. It happens to everyone from time to time. (I felt this way on many occasions—from my first job to my last.) It's frustrating, disheartening and scary. Perhaps because you know others feel this way, you think the answer is to suck it up and work harder, to get on with the job and not let others know that you're struggling, to strive to pull off the impossible because others are counting on you. (These were my coping mechanisms. Rarely would I admit that I couldn't do it all. When I did, I would sometimes act out of frustration, which didn't help anyone.)
One of the tenets of Lean thinking—which is a management framework designed to make processes more effective and efficient—is to make the invisible visible. For example, teams can make all the steps in a process evident so that bottlenecks can be streamlined and unnecessary steps eliminated. This same philosophy can be applied on an individual level. If you have multiple bosses, try making your total workload visible to those assigning you work, especially your boss; their job is to help you set priorities and to defend you when the demands on you exceed your capacity. If you feel like you're in over your head, try revealing this to your boss or a colleague, along with making a request for assistance, especially with the parts of a project where you feel stuck. If you feel that you're getting only critiques with little direction, try putting questions to your boss, colleague or client to solicit the input you need to produce a reasonable first draft. If you're losing confidence, remind yourself of all the other times you were intimidated by a task and yet managed to produce a solid result and learn from the experience, or ask a trusted friend, colleague or family member to remind you.
None of this is easy. There may be reasons you can't take all these steps. But there may be one thing you can do to make a little part of your reality visible to someone else and, in doing so, see that you're not alone and that help is available.
