Workload Management Quotes

Traditional ways to deal with information--reading, listening, writing, talking--are painfully slow in comparison to "viewing the big picture." Those who survive information overload will be those who search for information with broadband thinking but apply it with a single-minded focus.

the more you see yourself like a stranger, the more likely you are to give your future self the same workload that you would give a stranger, and the more likely you are to put things off to tomorrow—for your future self to do.

A popular myth is that learning is largely a matter of motivation. Increasingly, the key to effective learning in the information era is how you think, not how you feel.

Time is a most versatile resource. It flies, marches on, works wonders, and will tell. It also runs out.

It's not a good idea to cut back indiscriminately on what you read. The reason is that reading can save you time, because it gives you the opportunity to learn from other people's experience.

There is no question that having standards and believing in them and staffing an administrative unit objectively using forecasted workloads will help you to maintain and enhance productivity.

would entail more work and more responsibility. And the office is largely staffed by shirkers and idiots, Raymond. Managing them and their workloads would be quite a challenge, I can assure you.

In a self-organized team, individuals take accountability for managing their own workload, shift work among themselves based on need and best fit, and take responsibility for team effectiveness. Team members have considerable leeway in how they deliver results, they are self-disciplined in their accountability for those results, and they work within a flexible framework.

In our day to day life we go through various activities which may involve high work pressure and high workload and as per us, we feel that this burden of work is resulting in causing frustration. Though we don't realize that it is not the workload which causes this frustration and annoyance but rather it is our negligence in the proper management of that work. If you avoid mismanagement of your work and duties you are likely to face frustration, annoyance, and grievance much lesser.

gaining shelfspace has become a more strategic challenge for manufacturers. Shelfspace has to be won by planning product offerings to satisfy not just consumers’ needs but also the retailers’ objectives. Because the retailer is overwhelmed with offerings that claim to have consumer appeal – that is now a given – it is in being seen to best meet the retailers’ needs that has become the battleground. Store management wants to increase category sales, improve average margins, provide a good range to shoppers and perhaps offer exclusive products, all the while looking to increase operational efficiency and reduce inventory costs by minimising the number of lines stocked and the workload involved in getting products on the shelf. Manufacturers now have to win shelfspace by working through these complex and sometimes conflicting needs.

Who is responsible for an agency’s operational response to growing workloads and declining fees? In today’s agency culture, it’s everyone… and no one. The agency management culture is fragmented and divided. Everyone does his/her own thing. An integrated counter-attack is hard to organize, and in practice, it simply does not happen. At the end of the year, the finance director has the ultimate responsibility to deliver the agency’s profit margin, and this is often done through cost reductions – a blunt instrument, indeed, but the laissez-faire culture does not allow for much fine-tuning during the year. The agency management culture is a barrier to change. It

The other caution has to do with coordinating what work is phased out as a result of lower staffing levels. Leaders often let any such phasing out proceed of its own accord because they have faith that when they eliminate layers in the organizational chart or increase leadership spans of control, people who feel the increased workload will wisely and naturally eliminate tasks that are non-value added or of reduced competitive importance. But this faith is misplaced if employees are not clear about the relative value of work or what the strategic trade-offs should be. If they do not know what work to eliminate, they may not eliminate any at all and instead pass it on to someone else. In this way the organization chart is like a square of jiggly jelly. If you squeeze the jelly from the top and the bottom, it is going to squelch out the sides, and if you squeeze from the sides, it is going to squelch out the top and the bottom. Increasing spans of control—giving leaders more responsibility—may soon result in more layers (for example, one firm created “senior technician” roles for technicians to fill as intermediaries for busy managers). Decreasing layers of the organizational chart may increase spans of control (for example, another company eliminated a layer of managers but then hired a couple of new directors to handle the additional workload when all the reports were reassigned to the next highest management level). The total headcount dollars are never reduced, just reapportioned.

Goal setting is more art than science. We weren’t just teaching people how to refine an objective or a measurable key result. We had a cultural agenda, as well. Why is transparency important? Why would you want people across other departments to know your goals? And why does what we’re doing matter? What is true accountability? What’s the difference between accountability with respect (for others’ failings) and accountability with vulnerability (for our own)? How can OKRs help managers “get work done through others”? (That’s a big factor for scalability in a growing company.) How do we engage other teams to adopt our objective as a priority and help assure that we reach it? When is it time to stretch a team’s workload—or to ease off on the throttle? When do you shift an objective to a different team member, or rewrite a goal to make it clearer, or remove it completely? In building contributors’ confidence, timing is everything.

On top of the potential for restructuring the business, there are significant bloated costs to trim. General Insurance is paying for expensive sponsorship deals with sports teams that offer little benefit. It needlessly maintains two Gulfstream private jets. Some managers work four days a week because their workloads are perennially light. Bonus plans have targets that are far too easy to meet. Pensions are inexplicably overfunded, and the company’s contributions to pension programs can be scaled back to the lower end of targets set by regulators. The IT department is overstaffed and full of pet projects that the business will never realize value from. Low-grade IT can be outsourced to Asia.

feedback on quality, and bug fixing. These accelerate beneficial changes entering production, limit issues deployed, and enable rapid identification and remediation of issues introduced through deployment activities or discovered in your environments. Adopt approaches that provide fast feedback on quality and enable rapid recovery from changes that do not have desired outcomes. Using these practices mitigates the impact of issues introduced through the deployment of changes. Plan for unsuccessful changes so that you are able to respond faster if necessary and test and validate the changes you make. Be aware of planned activities in your environments so that you can manage the risk of changes impacting planned activities. Emphasize frequent, small, reversible changes to limit the scope of change. This results in easier troubleshooting and faster remediation with the option to roll back a change. It also means you are able to get the benefit of valuable changes more frequently. Evaluate the operational readiness of your workload, processes, procedures, and personnel

An eighteen-year-old must be able to manage his assignments, workload, and deadlines. The crutch: We remind kids when their homework is due and when to do it—sometimes helping them do it, sometimes doing it for them; thus, kids don’t know how to prioritize tasks, manage workload, or meet deadlines, without regular reminders.

Shifting scope works better than moving people because it avoids re-gelling costs, and it preserves system behavior. Preserving behavior keeps your existing mental model intact, and if it doesn’t work out, you can always revert a workload change with less disruption than would be caused by a staffing change.

How is it that so many knowledge workers end up with workloads calibrated to the exact edge of the overhead tax tipping point? One could imagine an alternative scenario in which most workers are far from that edge, easily able to absorb unexpected new commitments, or conversely, a scenario where workers constantly spiral past the tipping point in Frostick-style burnout. But this is not what we see. Most workers who are fortunate enough to exert some control over their efforts—such as knowledge workers, small-business entrepreneurs, or freelancers—tend to avoid taking on so much work that they crash and burn, but also tend to avoid working a reasonable amount. They exist at that point of maximum sustainable overhead tax that seems to represent the worst of all configurations, as it maintains the pain of having too much to do, but keeps this pain just manageable enough to avoid reform.

Research has established, however, that burnout is primarily the result of psychologically hazardous factors that occur at your workplace. (So no, it isn’t just an individual problem; it’s an organizational issue.) More specifically, burnout happens when there’s an ongoing mismatch between the conditions an employee needs to support their well-being and their best work, and what their organization actually provides. Not being given the resources or time you need to manage your workload, for example, or working in an environment where you have insufficient control and autonomy, are known burnout triggers.

As companies began to see the benefits of virtualization, they no longer purchased new hardware when their leases were over, or if they owned the equipment, when their hardware maintenance licenses expired. Instead, they virtualized those server workloads. This is called containment. Containment benefited corporations in multiple ways. They no longer had to refresh large amounts of hardware year after year; and all the costs of managing and maintaining those servers—power, cooling, etc.—were removed from their bottom line from that time on.

An interesting feature introduced with the Kilo release of OpenStack is federated identity. This takes the distributed nature of OpenStack and allows it to span across multiple clouds, even from different providers. Two cloud providers can set up a trust relationship, enabling users of one provider to use the same credentials with another, trusted provider. Thus the same workload management tools you use for a single cloud can theoretically be used to manage workloads across multiple clouds. For capacity burst use cases, this is a powerful feature

If we’re struggling with trust issues, it means we made a poor hiring decision. If a team member isn’t producing good results or can’t manage their own schedule and workload, we aren’t going to continue to work with that person. It’s as simple as that. We employ team members who are skilled professionals, capable of managing their own schedules and making a valuable contribution to the organization. We have no desire to be babysitters during the day.” That

Phase 3: Forgiveness As I shared in Chapter 7, forgiveness is critical to Blissipline and the peak states needed for extraordinary living. Here you’ll incorporate the forgiveness exercise from that chapter into your daily practice. Science is now showing that forgiveness can lead to profound health benefits, including reduced back pain, higher athletic performance, better heart health, and greater feelings of happiness. One study of a small group of people with chronic back pain showed that those who meditated with a focus on moving from anger to compassion reported less pain and anxiety compared to those who got regular care. Another study found that forgiving someone improved blood pressure and reduced the workload on the heart. Interesting that lightening the heart of negativity should literally help it. Research on the impact of forgiveness by Xue Zheng of Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Management showed that forgiveness makes the body seemingly stronger. “Our research shows that forgivers perceive a less daunting world and perform better on challenging physical tasks,” said Zheng. In one study, participants could actually jump higher after writing an account of forgiving someone who had harmed them. In another study by Zheng, participants who were asked to guess at the steepness of a hill described the hill as less steep after they had written down an account of an incident where they had forgiven someone. In a previous chapter, I described my own powerful experiences with forgiveness during meditation. That’s why forgiveness is one of the components of the Six-Phase—it strengthens not only your body, but also your soul.

REPORTING PEOPLE - an epidemic in Poland? (as usual, just a topic to be discussed on a lesson) The topic of reporting people, an activity still widespread in post-Communist Poland, has cropped up during yesterday's family gathering at my place. Real-life examples of reporting on people: - one person works for a government agency. Someone has recently (2017) called their supervisor to report her, saying that her workload was insufficient, - some person was a lecturer at a university. He then set up his own private practice and started earning significantly more money than his university colleagues. He started being frequently called to come and present all his financial statements at the Revenue. Spending a significant amount of time there, he made friends with the investigator, who informed him those were his work colleagues who continually reported him, - when my Dad bought his first 'real' car after the fall of Communism, someone from the area called the Revenue to inform them of this fact. He had to demonstrate how he had paid for it, - in the past, I gave classes at a language school in Poznań. It seemed to me I had a great contact with the students and that they were satisfied with the course (always smiling, laughing and talking a lot...). I quit the language school, because I took up another course at the uni and the hours overlapped. After a while, some woman contacted me via social media, telling me that the students had been dissatisfied with my teaching, saying I covered the material in too slow a manner. I was 21 years old, the woman approximately 10-15 years older (so you'd expect some more maturity). It came as a shock to me, as I had really not noticed any dissatisfaction and I really cared a lot about the students' satisfaction with the course. Fortunately, I later met a woman who had been one of the students at the course, and it turned out the students had actually been dissatisfied with HER teaching, saying her pace was too FAST. (It was a beginner's course for older people who had had no contact with English...). She invited me for a coffee and explained to me a few things. For example people's capacity for lying. She was a manager at a government agency, so she must have had some experience. - some coffee has also become a subject of me being reported recently. Thank you for your attention ;) feel free to disagree

Burnout has less to do with workload and more to do with internal and external leadership anxiety.

kensi Gounden says, However, keep in mind that combining evergreen solutions with contemporary tech will allow you to cater to the entirety of the modern market. Sometimes your team members are simply so busy managing the hectic daily workload that they don’t have the time or the resources to be creative or innovative. Instead of putting innovation on the backburner until an opportunity presents itself (which it never will), you can allocate some of your resources to create departments and divisions intended for this purpose.

When I finally get my workload under control/get my candidate elected/find the right romantic partner/sort out my psychological issues, then I can relax, and the life I was always meant to be living can begin.” The person mired in this mentality believes that the reason she doesn’t feel fulfilled and happy is that she hasn’t yet managed to accomplish certain specific things; when she does so, she imagines, she’ll feel in charge of her life and be the master of her time. Yet in fact the way she’s attempting to achieve that sense of security means she’ll never feel fulfilled, because she’s treating the present solely as a path to some superior future state—and so the present moment won’t ever feel satisfying in itself. Even if she does get her workload under control, or meet her soulmate, she’ll just find some other reason to postpone her fulfillment until later on.

For example, maybe you’re afraid you’ll be fired and lose your income if you don’t stay on top of your impossible workload. But this is a misunderstanding. If the level of performance you’re demanding of yourself is genuinely impossible, then it’s impossible, even if catastrophe looms—and facing this reality can only help. There is a sort of cruelty, Iddo Landau points out, in holding yourself to standards nobody could ever reach (and which many of us would never dream of demanding of other people). The more humane approach is to drop such efforts as completely as you can. Let your impossible standards crash to the ground. Then pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and get started on them today.

Bordio is the industry standard for project management software. Your current schedule, goals and workload are viewable on your phone, laptop or desktop to keep you organized no matter where you are. As an alternative to online-only solutions that often drag down company servers because of their high bandwidth needs, Bordio has partnered with Cutting Edge Technologies to provide a solution that can be used anywhere whether offline or wired.

Why is transparency important? Why would you want people across other departments to know your goals? And why does what we’re doing matter? What is true accountability? What’s the difference between accountability with respect (for others’ failings) and accountability with vulnerability (for our own)? How can OKRs help managers “get work done through others”? (That’s a big factor for scalability in a growing company.) How do we engage other teams to adopt our objective as a priority and help assure that we reach it? When is it time to stretch a team’s workload—or to ease off on the throttle? When do you shift an objective to a different team member, or rewrite a goal to make it clearer, or remove it completely? In building contributors’ confidence, timing is everything.

If you have such an intense workload that you feel like you don’t have time to take care of yourself in a basic way on a continual basis, talk to your manager.

When considering tasks to delegate, you should also consider tasks that aren’t appropriate to delegate. Tasks that have unclear objectives, high stakes, rely on your unique skills, or a personal growth opportunity should be completed by you. Once you identify the tasks, it is easier to identify the person. Now, we recognize delegation as growth opportunities for our team. We must also consider the skill sets for the tasks. Take a moment to identify the skills and competencies needed. Consider the individual and assess based on the following: skills, strengths, reliability, workload, and development potential. As the tasks are delegated, keep the individuals’ skills in mind. This will be a new endeavor for them and require you to build their self-confidence.  This is why strength-and-skills matching is important. Set clear goals and routine check-ins. Also provide good feedback to the individuals on the progress

I am slyly pleased that I have pain to contend with, rather than a more nebulous sense of my own overwhelm. It feels more concrete somehow. I can hide behind it and say, See, I am not unable to manage my workload. I am legitimately ill.

Variation Management Is there internally produced variation (e.g., end-of-quarter sales incentives)? How can we level incoming workload along the value stream to reduce variation and achieve greater flow? Can we reduce variation in customer or internal requirements? How can necessary variation be addressed most effectively? Are there common prioritization rules in place throughout the value stream?

Loose management practices dominate agency cultures, just as they did during the high-profit past. Client heads are not held accountable for depressed fee levels, unmanaged workloads or insufficient resources for client work. Office heads are not held accountable for the varied performance of their client heads.

If we’re struggling with trust issues, it means we made a poor hiring decision. If a team member isn’t producing good results or can’t manage their own schedule and workload, we aren’t going to continue to work with that person. It’s as simple as that. We employ team members who are skilled professionals, capable of managing their own schedules and making a valuable contribution to the organization. We have no desire to be babysitters during the day.

1.5 Make time to manage People used to worry about keeping their desk tidy. Now it’s also about keeping the computer desktop tidy. Then there are the interruptions, the telephone, the meetings…Follow these nine tips to get rid of the time robbers in your life. 1 Be clear about what you want to achieve. Do the one minute wonder exercise opposite. 2 Plan your work. Write down your goals and break each goal down into sub-tasks. Give start and finish dates to each task. 3 Book appointments with your work. If a report is going to take two hours, then make an appointment with that report as if it were a real person. 4 Deal with tasks as soon as you can. If it’s an unpleasant task then do it first thing. 5 Be ruthless with time – but courteous with people. But don’t over-socialize either face to face or on the phone. Remember you’re eating into other people’s time as well! one minute wonder Write down your job purpose. Then write the five activities that help you achieve this job purpose. Rate each activity 1-5 according to how happy you are with the time you spend on each (1=low, 5=high). Now get those low – rated activities into your diary! 6 Deal with your email three times a day. First thing in the morning, mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Turn off the pop-up that tells you when an email has just come through. 7 Deal with interruptions. Ask the interrupter if it’s quick or if it can wait until later. If interrupted at your desk, then stand up to keep the other person focused. 8 Deal with your in-tray once a day. Take each item and: deal with it; delegate it; file it or dump it. 9 Plan your telephone calls. Save them up and do them in a block so they’ll be quicker and more focused. The worst feeling as a manager is when we think that the workload is too much for us. These nine tips make sure that you stay in control and go home each evening feeling on top of your workload. Being a great time manager leaves you with more time for your people.

We suffer from overly ambitious timelines and poorly managed workloads due to a fundamental uneasiness with ever stepping back from the numbing exhaustion of jittery busyness.

Benefits of Outsourcing to Architectural Rendering Companies The demand for high-quality visuals has never been greater. Whether it’s showcasing a futuristic skyscraper or visualizing a cozy residential home, architectural renderings have become an essential tool for architects, developers, and interior designers. Let’s explore the key benefits of outsourcing architectural rendering services, and how it can enhance efficiency, creativity, and business growth. 1. Access to Expertise and Advanced Tools Professional architectural rendering companies employ experienced designers, architects, and visual artists who specialize in creating high-quality renderings. They bring a level of expertise that may not always be available in-house, ensuring that every project benefits from top-tier skills and creativity. Additionally, these companies use the latest software and technology for architectural 3D modeling and rendering, including tools like AutoCAD, SketchUp, and V-Ray. Outsourcing gives businesses access to these cutting-edge resources without the need for expensive investments in software or training. 2. Cost Efficiency Building an in-house rendering team can be costly. It requires hiring skilled professionals, purchasing software licenses, and maintaining powerful hardware for rendering tasks. By outsourcing to architectural rendering services, businesses can save significantly on overhead costs. Instead of managing full-time staff, companies pay only for the services they need, whether it’s a single project or ongoing support. This flexibility allows firms to allocate resources more effectively while still delivering high-quality visuals to clients. 3. Faster Turnaround Times Time is often a critical factor in architectural and real estate projects. Meeting tight deadlines can be challenging when handling rendering tasks internally. Architectural rendering companies are equipped to manage large workloads efficiently, ensuring timely delivery of projects without compromising on quality. Their streamlined workflows and dedicated teams allow businesses to focus on core activities like design and client engagement, while the rendering experts handle the technical aspects. 4. Enhanced Creativity and Innovation Collaborating with specialized 3D architectural visualization services brings fresh perspectives to your projects. These companies often work with diverse clients across various industries, which helps them stay updated on the latest trends and techniques. Outsourcing allows firms to benefit from this creative expertise, resulting in visually stunning and innovative renderings that captivate clients and stakeholders. Whether it’s experimenting with unique lighting effects or creating immersive virtual reality experiences, the possibilities are endless. 5. Scalability for Projects of All Sizes The flexibility of outsourcing makes it ideal for businesses that handle projects of varying scales. Whether you need renderings for a single-family home or a multi-story commercial complex, architectural rendering services can adapt to your requirements. Outsourcing also allows firms to scale their rendering capacity based on demand. For instance, during peak periods or large-scale projects, outsourcing ensures that deadlines are met without overburdening in-house teams. 6. Improved Client Communication Visual presentations play a crucial role in architectural projects. By outsourcing to architectural rendering companies, firms can deliver photorealistic visuals that help clients understand and engage with the design. Detailed renderings and architectural 3D modeling make it easier to explain concepts, showcase material choices, and demonstrate spatial layouts. This clarity fosters better communication, reduces misunderstandings, and builds trust with clients.

What you’ve probably discovered, at least at some level, is that a calendar, though important, can really effectively manage only a small portion of what you need to organize. And daily to-do lists and simplified priority coding have proven inadequate to deal with the volume and variable nature of the average professional’s workload.