The atmosphere here has become very bad. In fact, I don't think it's ever been worse. On the other hand, I'm so overwhelmed with work that I hardly have time to dedicate myself to looking for a new job as much as I would like. You?
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That’s where I draw a line. I will hold up the system and not a person/team.
It’s about being more open about how long something is going to take. Be vocal about it and pad your time.
Also make sure to let people know, like your manager, you have competing projects.
Something like if you want X done, then Y is going to be delayed. Which would you prefer?
The cup can only hold so much water.
I'm not sure about pushing back. It depends on the group. I've not seen it help manage the workload. What may be useful are delay strategies. I knew a guy who successfully did maybe a half hour of actual work per week. He got on a lot of calls. He made a lot of useless power points. He required others to provide him with inputs into those power points, so he had someone to blame for delays. He shirked responsibilities by controlling access to some data, and then fobbing you off onto others so you wound up wasting a lot of time. And he took credit when he did virtually nothing but sit in on meetings.
He was very frustrating to work with but he was a true master of the game.
The company will push you until you break. The company wants to get as much out of you as possible.
You need to push back. This can be done directly by just telling your manager or whomever is asking for the work “no”.
You can do this indirectly by just pushing out the deadlines and delivery dates.
I’ve done the math for me and the potential of a maximum of a 3% more pay for the year was not worth putting in 100-110% of effort. I can get 100% of my pay by putting in 80% (or less) in effort.
I’ve been doing that for the last 3 years. I won’t be here by the end of the year and that is by choice.
So that is one way to free up time. Another way to “make time” is to offload the work of finding another job.
You can find a VA on upwork/fiverr to fill out job applications for you. You can also leverage tools like chatGPT to write tailored cover letters and answer application questions (it worked for me).
You will need to have 100-200 applications in to get an offer so keep that in mind.
Office Space the movie came out in early 1999, so maybe a lot of current employees have never seen it?
the first commenter is quoting the movie Office Space, not what they do each day. I wonder though ...
[sorry for explaining that but the negative votes surprised me]
Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way my boss can't see me, heh - after that I sorta space out for an hour. Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.