Is Your Schedule Overloaded Like A Dishwasher?

George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:30:09 +0000

Some couples argue about whether the toilet paper should roll over or under. Others squabble about whether toothpaste should be squeezed from the bottom or the middle. We might be unique, but we have a running disagreement about how full the dishwasher should be.

If you’re keeping an eye on the news, you see that a lot of large companies are cutting marketing and even customer service. They’re cutting jobs and even entire departments. They’re streamlining.

And Mary-Lynn doesn’t fill it up enough … we spend money we don’t need to because we waste water and electricity.

Well, we spend money when we have to wash the dishes again because some of them didn’t get washed in the overload.

So now you see where we reach an impasse!

More importantly, this whole dishwasher discussion made us think about our schedules.

My theory is that if you put too much into your schedule, just like the dishwasher, you can’t get it all done.

I don’t disagree that you have to be careful about overloading your schedule. I may be guilty at times of doing that, just like I overload the dishwasher according to Mary-Lynn. But you know the old saying – if you want something done, give it to a busy person.

It’s the old 80/20 rule – 80 percent of the work gets done in 20 percent of the time. It is true that when you’re super busy, it seems like you are more productive. However, when you get too overloaded, you may not achieve what you set out to do. The result – you get frustrated and discouraged. It can even paralyze you at times.

4 ways to keep from being overloaded

#1 – Plan for reaction time

When I first started managing people, I often overbooked myself because I didn’t allow for time to respond to my employees. I’ve seen a lot of first-time managers make this same mistake. The closer you are to the front line, the more important this is. Allow time to react to customers and employees or you’ll find yourself with too much to do in too little time.

#2 – Understand your patterns

George is more of a morning person … I’m more of an afternoon person. So we just don’t work together at all! Seriously, plan your schedule so you’re working on your most important activities when you’re at your best.

#3 – Work at human capacity

This is a tough one. My dad, who’s one of my heroes, always thought he could get done more in a day than he actually could. He taught me well! Make sure you’re not planning ten hours of work if you only have eight hours to do it. Realize that you’re human, too. There will be times when you need to slow down or take a break.

#4 – Sometimes it pays to procrastinate

A prime example is the post you’re reading. Yesterday, we were trying to get this show done and I just wasn’t feeling well. We felt like if we pressed on, our end product wouldn’t have been as good as what you’re reading now.

So we decided to put it off for a day. There was no reason not to … and hopefully, you’ll agree that we did alright!

Now if I can just get George to stop loading the dishwasher so full!

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Is Your Schedule Overloaded Like A Dishwasher?

4 ways to keep from being overloaded