How do I stop feeling overwhelmed at work? | Hacker News Reader

How do I stop feeling overwhelmed at work?

4 pointsdiabolika3 comments

I'm a business analyst doing all data work for some middle man company. Atm, I feel overwhelmed, one email after the other, demanding me to finish all the reports (all still in dev. stage for this new program). Sometimes I just stare at the screen, I couldn't even start anything. And then there's constant distraction (Ms teams, more emails...).

I got assigned to this new program where I have to build all the reports from scratch. I do like building and creating but it just got to a point when it feels overwhelming.

When I found out someone else is going to revamp everything that I created for the old program I was handling, I felt even more demotivated. No wonder I couldn't even finish anything now.

I was promised of promotion and wage increase this quarter but now I feel like I wont be getting it as I cannot fulfill the demands anymore.

It sounds like you are in a shitty situation with lots of responsibility and not enough control. Have you talked about this with your manager?

Telling your manager "hey, this is not possible, what can we do?" is a power move imo, if you have ideas on how to solve the problems even better.

It could provoke change, get you some more control, or at a minimum gives you the "I warned you" defense if it reflects badly on you at some point (although it's quite messed up if you need that last one..).

What helps me in general is to care a little less; not everything has to be perfect, "good enough" is often plenty, and also realizing you can't always do it all. Basically the "I do what I can" attitude.

Good luck, sounds like a rough situation, I hope you can improve things for yourself.

Modern work just expands to fill all available space.

There's no sense of limit to it, in the way e.g. a baker would make 500 loaves of bread every night, sell it, and that's it.

A modern enterprise can always find some more things to do -- and label everything a priority too.

(Of course the baker could too, they could to bake breads to exhaustion - but the modern enterprise understands no limits, whereas the baker did. Also the baker had to do the baking - so he felt the pain when he expanded the scope of work endlessly, whereas the modern analyst or dev or employee is just a cog, and the managers can always blah blah more stuff for other people to perform).

I’m sorry for you. I’m feeling the same. I’m a software engineer and sometimes, this happens. Talk with your pm and tell how do you feel. If they don’t care, you’re investing your time un the wrong company.

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