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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