Reducing Role Overload

Whenever you are over burdened with more than one role, you may be at a loss to know how to decide whether to spend your time more.  The following ideas may be useful to you.

1. PARTIAL WITHDRAWAL:

You may like to withdraw partially from one role.  For example, you may decide not to attend your club for the next one full week because you have other priorities.  In this, you recognise the fact that you have a role but partially withdraw from the role. 

2. SELECTIVE IGNORANCE

In this approach instead of completely not attending to any activity associated with a role, you become very selective.  For example, instead of completely avoiding going to the club, you may only decide to join the membership campaign of the club activity.  In this way, you spend sometime in the club but not all the time.

3. RESPOND TO POWER

You may analyse that there may be people to punish you or to reward you.  While deciding whether to do a job or not, do not ignore such roles who may punish you or reward you.  For example, if a customer is calling you for a meeting, do not ignore since you may be rewarded with an order.  Similarly when a boss is calling you for a meeting do not ignore since he may be in a position to reward you for good work.

4.  RESPOND TO LEGITIMACY

Certain roles will have the right to demand your time.  For example, a working mother may respond to sickness of her child.  She may ignore the official work in preference to attend to sickness the ailing child. 

5. COMPARTMENTALISATION OF RESPONSES

Sometimes when you are under a stress, you may decide to reprogramme your entire week by a weekly calendar.  Have a very clear focus with time zone and timeframe.  You will decide what to do on a Monday morning and what to do on a Tuesday afternoon etc.  This will bring a routine to your various activities.                    

6. RENEGOTIATION OF DEMANDS

When you have attended to all the above you may still have to come across in managing your time.  When it happens you renegotiate with all the connected roles.  You agree or disagree with your time commitment taking into account of the realities of your time pressure. This will give you a new time table which will meet the expectations from many perspectives.                   

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