Overload

It took me a while to realize it -- there is one huge interest to accept more work than we can actually t, especially work our bosses ask us to do. Once we are a overloaded, it becomes very easy to postpone forever things that we don't want to do in the first place -- without having to say so. This is such a convenient strategy (especially in situations which we fear would become too confrontational otherwise) that we may even resist suggestions such as doing only one thing at a time, prioritizing our tasks, using flash cards to write them down... any change that could make us more efficient and bring us closer to those tasks that we want to avoid.

So much for the huge interest. Let's talk now about the giganormous inconvenience attached to this strategy. When we say we'll do something and we don't, people don't trust us anymore. They become frustrated, and tend to act incongruently with us -- no surprise here, we've been acting incongruently with them in the first place. This results in more frustration on our part, wasted energy trying to decode people's behaviours, and (oh) big, big, low self-esteem.

We deserve better. We need to learn to say no.