41–50 of 54 posts
Why would you ever say things that are untrue? You are simply a lier then. Saying "yes" even though you DONT actually know if you can make it is a lie. You are lying to your manager. Tell him that it's probably gonna be close, and other work might suffer or even that work in particular. I mean why on earth WOULDNT you tell him that? It's not like this won't come up immediately anyway when you inevitably don't finish…
I seldom say no, I say "Yeh I can do that it might take so and so, I'm doing this at the moment, do you want me to put that on hold?" - if they're for the same person. If they're for different people then - "Yah I can do that, I'm doing this for fred at the moment, so have a talk to him if you like" (or to who ever else pays the bills). Seems to work. If it's a client, "I'll add it to the list and talk to (whoever's…
There you go, 9 times out of 10 they will shelve the idea.
I seldom say no, I say "Yeh I can do that it might take so and so, I'm doing this at the moment, do you want me to put that on hold?" - if they're for the same person. If they're for different people then - "Yah I can do that, I'm doing this for fred at the moment, so have a talk to him if you like" (or to who ever else pays the bills). Seems to work. If it's a client, "I'll add it to the list and talk to (whoever's…
One weird situation I often encounter is people wanting something on a deadline, but there isn't actually enough time or circumstances have changed. It's highly unproductive when people just keep repeating that a deadline must be meet, regardless of circumstances. What I have resorted to in these cases are not saying no, but asking what they'd have me do. That often removes the expectation of magic or whatever management believes is going to intervene if you just keeps pushing.
In that vein, the BBC used to vet new hires (in an assessment) around how they would react to a colleague who kept asking for help on similar things but refused to learn how to do it themselves.
No idea if they still do this but worth thinking if you are enabling your colleagues to just dump it on you.
Ask yourself, do you completely take over? Have you tried getting them to do it by talking them through but not hands on solving it for them?
Often quicker a couple of times to just take over but long term they'll be reliant on you and you'll be stuck helping them solve that problem time after time.
Harder to do that with tasks from a manager or similar, but I've found it helps to talk through what you'd have to do, what you'd have to drop and problems you see coming. You'll probably still have to do it but you can make explicit what will move down your pecking order.
Get a todo list, do tasks in order of importance; if someone comes in and asks you something, say "yes, but" and give it a place in your list. Don't leave tasks half-finished before starting the next, if you can finish them at least.
I just said no one day. It got easier the day after that, and easier still the day after that.
This is it simply, part of growing up. Although I might clarify, you could say yes until you plate is full, then you say, "sorry, I'm booked until…"
OT but I'd be more curious to know how you handle things when you've done it "right". Said yes to this, no to that. You're booked with an abundance of time. Then you hit a snag in a project and what you thought was going to take a few days ends up taking weeks. Then more weeks because of more unforseen issues. Sure you could've researched things to death from the start but there were hidden gremlins you couldn't have…
The other thing? CUT. Can't have feature completed by next week? What are the parameters? Could you do a mock-up or a skeleton of it and have it serve the immediate, urgent purpose, while potentially still moving you towards final feature nirvana? Better phrased: you've hit a snag, you can't deliver what you said, on the deadline that you said- especially if you fear that manager you'll be reporting to, tell him/her what you CAN still deliver on that timetable. "What CAN you deliver, then?" is almost certainly on someone in your chain of command's mind, desperately begging for an answer! :)
A client who knew nothing about programming whatsoever, much less the intricacies of programming languages, wanted my brother and I to build the stupid app they wanted in Ruby on Rails. We explained to them we don't know Ruby on Rails and doing it in that language would take us 4x longer because we'd have to learn both a language and framework as we were building the app. "Nope, it has to be Ruby on Rails. Oh, and so…
You say Yes I can but first need to be finished this and that.
Then say: If you feel your task has priority let me talk to my supervisor 1st.
You will be yes man, expert and your boss will know u r busy.
Noone will feel bad about your attitude. Try it.
Martin