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When are you exhausted and when are you overworked?
If you are new to the job, you often have to find the right balance first.
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Photo: Ekaterina Goncharova / Getty Images
Anyone who is just starting their career and is not properly looked after by their new employer can quickly fall into one of two extremes: either you have the feeling that everything is too much - or on the contrary, that you are not needed.
Both are uncomfortable and lead to frustration.
Especially as a career starter, you sometimes don't really know how to address the topic with your superiors.
In such cases, one simple tool can help: a schedule.
When overwhelmed
40 unread e-mails, the chats with colleagues are overflowing, the boss knocks on the office door and just wants to discuss something, and then the phone starts ringing.
On days like this, you suspect: Today I will definitely not get home on time.
But with all the agreements, meetings and hustle and bustle, you often forget to reflect: What did I actually do today?
It is therefore worth stopping regularly and writing down the answer to this question.
Best like this:
Make a list of all the professional responsibilities you have taken on in the past month.
For me, these are, for example: online meetings, processing emails, working on projects, visiting customers.
Next, think about how much time they spent on each activity and write the corresponding number of hours next to it.
If you look at months instead of individual days or weeks, special effects are not so significant.
If, for example, your closest colleague was absent for a week and you had to take over tasks from him, the analysis would give a completely wrong picture if you only looked at this one week.
Now total the hours.
Then comes the most important part, the analysis.
Here you can ask yourself the following questions: Do I work significantly more hours than contractually agreed?
Which of the activities listed are those that take the most time?
Am I the right person for these tasks or are there others who could do them just as well or even better?
What is my primary and most important task in the company?
How much time do I allocate to this task?
Based on this analysis, the working day can be tidied up.
You can implement some things yourself, for example asking colleagues not to just clarify open questions at the door, but to make an appointment for it.
You can also block times in your diary when you work quietly and concentrated on the important things.
Other changes require support from superiors.
Maybe it turns out that you can't do your core task at all because you don't have the time for it and you actually need help from colleagues.
Then you are looking for a conversation – for which such an analysis offers a valuable basis for discussion.
In case of insufficient demand
If you have the feeling that you only do trivial things and have to constantly look for tasks, you can also follow the path described above and create a corresponding list.
In the end, with their help, you can also show that valuable working time is not being used productively.
Here, however, it makes sense to approach the list differently, not looking at the whole month, but individual days and weeks and their exact sequence.
This makes it easier to see gaps in the daily routine.
Works that are meaninglessly decorated can also be discovered better this way.
For example, it is relatively unlikely that as a career starter you will have to answer e-mails in two hours a day.
However, if such a pattern emerges, it can be used as a basis for a discussion with the manager.
Here, too, you can ask yourself similar questions as when you are overwhelmed, first and foremost, of course: What is my primary task?
Anyone who can show what the working time is used for is more likely to meet with understanding and be given new, meaningful tasks.
Take stock again later
I find such a schedule to be a real magic wand.
The implementation may be difficult at first, after all it costs additional time and you really have to keep at it.
In the long term, however, this leads to better efficiency and thus greater satisfaction.
Of course, the method can also be individually adapted and modified.
In any case, the documents can be dated and kept.
After a few weeks or months you do the same evaluation again and put the papers on top of each other.
Seeing that things have changed (hopefully for the better) makes you happy and motivated.
