If you ever feel like the harder you work, the worse things get, there is some good news.
You’re not alone.
An excellent team article from BusinessWeek Online lays out the case-in chief:
Honk if this sounds like you: While much of America is watching Jon Stewart, Letterman, or Leno, you’re stumbling out the office door into a car-service Town Car or groping for the clicker to the BMW in the company parking lot. Once home, you slug down a beer or the last of a bottle of white wine on the door of the fridge, stuff some leftovers in your mouth, and collapse into bed beside your sleeping spouse. A half-dozen hours later, you crawl to the shower, throw on a clean shirt, pour some coffee down your throat, maybe drop a kid or two at school, and jump back on the frenetic work treadmill that you can’t shut off.
True, it’s just another thing to read. But worth it. (Note that you can stop reading after you hit “…and what you can do about it” on the jump page–the editors have repeated the intro. Sort of ironic in an article about information overload).
A final thought to ponder:
Many of the most overloaded managers are not yet at a level where they have the luxury of controlling their schedules or dispensing with unproductive e-mails, pesky voice mails, and interminable meetings. But in terms of reducing work overload, perhaps the biggest and most difficult step will be for corporations to give their knowledge workers more freedom over their own time. “The Industrial Age approach to management dies a pretty tough death,” says Babson’s Davenport. “Even today people end up being evaluated not only on how much they produce but also on how many hours they are in the office.”
Hours in the office important in the legal community? You’ve got to be kidding…