Is Your Workload Unrealistic? How to Tell and What to Do

Do you regularly have a to-do list at the office that’s more than a page long? Has your in-box never, ever been empty? Do you spend the bulk of your time racing against the clock? Do you often stay late or take work home to try to catch up? Do you make more mistakes than you think you should? Does a technical breakdown or bureaucratic obstacle send you into a panic? If so, you may be struggling with an unrealistic workload.

Unrealistic workloads happen for a variety of different reasons. Here are some possibilities:

Your department is understaffed. This is probably the most common reason why workers may wind up overloaded. In today’s tight economy, it may be unavoidable for employers to cut staff and overload those who are left, but it’s a short-term solution that’s likely to lead to job turnover, absenteeism, and poor work quality, especially if the boss uses harsh management strategies to try to get more work out of people than is reasonable.  

Your boss has planning problems. He or she may underestimate how long things take, believing that a new online system or computer program will save more time than it does, or failing to realize how slowly projects can move through a bureaucracy. If your boss is a workaholic, he or she may have distorted ideas about the importance of work and expect everyone else to share his/her craziness. Also, bosses who give out assignments as they occur to them in the course of the day may have no idea how they can add up.


You’ve bitten off more than you can chew. You may habitually trap yourself into an unrealistic workload by failing to think about how much time projects you voluntarily take on will really take.  

An overfunctioning/underfunctioning dance with a coworker. The more you do the less your coworker does. The less he/she does, the more you do. It’s easy to fall into such a dance without realizing it, especially if you grew up overfunctioning.

Whatever the reason, unrealistic workloads can result in office battleshock if you don’t take steps to protect yourself. Struggling fruitlessly day after day becomes exhausting and demoralizing, and it’s also a set-up for bad comments on performance appraisals about the quality of your work. Here are some suggestions:

1. Resist the temptation to deal with an excessive workload by working ever harder. This will only inflate your boss’s expectations so you end up even more buried than you are now.
2. Don’t allow yourself to work more than an hour per day of overtime except under extreme circumstances (when a big project has a deadline, for example). If you limit the number of hours you allow yourself to work, you’ll work more efficiently during those hours. If you still can’t keep up, start looking for a job that isn’t a set up for a physical or mental breakdown NOW.
3. Don’t let hurrying become habitual. It’s okay to rush once in awhile, but making it into a lifestyle is bound to take its toll on you, and the faster you go, the more mistakes you’re likely to make. If you’re behind, rethink your strategies in order to work smarter rather than faster.
4. Don’t get into a sick competition with coworkers to see who can abuse him- or herself the most by working the longest hours, taking the fewest breaks, or rushing around fastest for the sake of the company. Instead, compare notes with others about workload problems and brainstorm about ways you might help each other out.
5. Bolster your time management skills. Make a to-do list every morning in Outlook or a comparable program, categorizing tasks. Enter everything you have to do, large and small, and continue to add to the list throughout the day. Next to each entry, put down the date when you plan to perform the task (not the date when it’s due), breaking large tasks into steps. Add some extra blank lines for each category so you can write in new tasks by hand that come up during the day. Print out your list and use a highlighter to mark each task with today’s date on it. Keep the list next to your computer and cross off each task as you do it. The next morning, delete tasks from the list that you’ve done, write in new tasks, and, after printing the date at the top, file the old list, which serves as a useful record of work that you’ve done.
6. Don’t expect good time-management skills to accomplish miracles if your workload is truly unrealistic. Instead, print out your fancy, highlighted to-do list and show it to your boss, asking for help with prioritization. Presenting your workload in black-and-white can make a powerful statement to a boss who doesn’t realize how much he or she has given you to do.   
7. Ask yourself what kinds of snags routinely cost you the most time. Does your printer keep jamming up? Are you having to spend a lot of time digging for papers you can’t find? Are you slow at something because of lack of training? Then ask yourself what you can do to solve the problem.
8. Pool tasks and errands that can be done together, taking all your mail at once to the mailbox, for example.
9. Do some creative thinking about what structural changes in your workplace might reduce your work overload, and consider presenting a proposal to your boss. How many work hours are realistically needed to keep up with your current workload? Could you convince your boss to let you hire a subordinate to help you? Would you be willing to cut back your own hours so that a second person could be hired to share your workload? Could someone from another department be brought in to help out? While it’s not always the case, sometimes all you have to do to get you what you need is to ask.