Tweet: Saying NO to ad hoc time demands for work others want you to do requires a strategy, discipline, and a way to stave-off such requests.

We pick our joys and sorrows long before we experience them!—Khalil Gibran

Many clients initially come to me because they feel that they have lost control over their work-life. What do I mean by this? The common refrain of these clients is that, despite their already crushing workload, new work or tasks keep piling on them when someone saunters by their office or catches them rushing on their way to a late meeting and asks them urgently to do a “small favor” to get them out of a bind. Others have the temerity to even say, I am already late for my golf lessons, can you do this for me?

Typically, these requests could be for a response to an urgent customer query, a price quote for a new configuration that the potential customer wants, or something that is easily available if they just bothered to look at the right place for that information. This MO puts my clients in a constant “fire-fighting” mode and they end up having a long list of tasks, especially the ones given by their superiors in their chain of command, which remain open. Carrying such a crushing burden of unfinished tasks and the constant flow of urgent tasks greatly affect their personal work-life balance to boot. What frustrates them even further is their inability to have any quiet time for themselves to reflect, think, and to do something creative in their own roles, further making their jobs less fulfilling.

To accommodate yet another request you agree to respond to the urgent task right after that meeting. As you are working on that just-preempted task, yet another person calls you from overseas and demands something else to be done with top priority, as it is already nearing the end of their day. When such requests come from people with “higher” ranks, despite the fact that they are not your immediate manager, you feel compelled to respond in kind.

To these clients—and many others like them—this is an endless cycle of tasks that puts them in a constantly “interrupted mode,” making them both inefficient and frustrated. Inefficient because those asking for these “small tasks” have no clue what it really takes to deliver the right outcome; frustrated because such ad hoc tasks are not “metered,” so despite your going out of the way to respond, you are unable to benefit from your diligence at the time of your own Annual Performance Review (APR) or how you can translate your successes in the next version of your résumé. You are further piqued when your own boss catches you on your delinquent list of tasks that you should be working on and demands to know: Keshav, what do you do all day?

As a career and life coach for the past 16 years I have encountered many such cases as I now count over 6,000 professionals as my clients. One pattern that I see in these statistics is that those in the US who complain about such “interrupted” work existence are mostly Asian immigrants (those from the Indian subcontinent and from China and Japan). Since I have clients in 23 countries I also find this a common pattern among the natives of those countries where the culture demands that an employee do the work when it is “ordered” by anyone of a higher rank; such a person does not need to be in their immediate chain of command. In other words, in geographies where the Power Distance Index (PDI) is high such practices are rampant with the natives. The PDI in the US tends to be at the low end of the spectrum. Yet, the immigrants from these geographies continue to operate with the mindset as if they were in their native lands. This is further compounded by the mindset of their managers if they also emigrated from these geographies.
So, how do you get some control over your workload and how do you manage it so that you have the ability to do the work that gets proper acknowledgement on the basis of your own work priorities as set by your immediate superiors and the expectations set by them? In this blog I am going to address my recommendations to those in the US and who may or may not be from those geographies I listed above. I have seen non-immigrants (those born and raised in the US) also suffering from this problem, albeit to a lesser extent. Being raised in a low PDI culture immunizes you from accepting a task just because they hold a superior position.

1. If you are caught in this endless battle of “interrupted workflow” identify the pattern of the interrupts and develop an 80-20 assessment of that flow. Find out what 20% of the tasks that interrupt your workflow are taking 80% of your time and effort to address it.
2. Once you have this 20% tasks identified make a ranked frequency list of these tasks and see if you can identify what top 3-5 tasks within this group can be Delegated Outsourced, Automated, or Eliminated (DOA-E). I call this the DOA-E approach: Dead On Arrival for Everyone!
3. Delegating a task entails sending it over to someone within your team (if you have direct reports) and thus discounting the value of the request if you can do this without alienating that relationship. It is difficult if someone really high-up, even though they are not in your chain of command, comes to you with a request for you to attend to and you delegate it down. Always use your judgment and discretion when delegating down.
4. Outsourcing entails identifying a resource either within your company or elsewhere, which can address the person’s need. The best way to respond to such an “outsourced” request is to say, Jim, I know you think that this can be done in 10 minutes, but to put a meaningful response takes me about 6-8 hours. ABC is the best resource to do this, so, why don’t you go after them and get this done. I am currently working on two urgent tasks myself and I cannot finish them before tomorrow as required already. After that I have other priorities. I hope you understand. Say this with a smile and a wink.
5. Automating something entails developing a formal way to create an application or software that addresses the need that comes from all directions. So, if you are a Solutions Architect in a software services company one of the common requests will be for putting together certain solutions (going from what the customer has to what you want to sell them) using your various modules. Most of this work can be automated using Apps and other tricks. Although such efforts take time and resources you should be able to make a case for doing this to your manager by showing them how it would help everyone in your workgroup, and even beyond, to have this on their hands and how it will free-up your time to do something of greater value to the department and the company.
6. Eliminating a list of tasks entails telling people where the information they are seeking is available and giving them specific vectors on that guidance. “Jim, that information is in our current Price List. All you need to do is to add all the itemized components and figure out the total.” If you do this to Jim a few times he is unlikely to bother you with that sundry detail again.
7. As you develop your own DOA-E approach to drive away interruptions you must learn how to feel comfortable interacting with those who previously expected you to jump to your feet in attention on their commands. Instead of just blowing them away when they come with their requests take the time to explain your current workload and priorities and then give them options so that they feel empowered to pursue them in the interest of protecting their own priorities. Once you start feeling comfortable dodging these requests two things will happen: Your own immunity to send people away without succumbing to their demands will gradually increase, and secondly, they will get the message and start harassing you less and less. Here, learning to use the right language to deflect their pursuit in a new direction and addressing the expectations from the cultural vestiges of their past is something that is going to require some practice on your part.
8. One of the key barriers to most people—especially immigrants—caught in this endless cycle of new work is their perceived lack of ability to influence those who demand work from them. Once you set the tone of these interactions by accepting anything they bring it your way, their expectation patterns are difficult to break. So, learning how to frame your response and phrase your language in those conversations is something that you must learn as your soft skill. In the same vein when you get urgent email and phone messages demanding priority responses, learn to ignore them for a day or so as appropriate. Often urgent requests disappear when the sender realizes that “lack of planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on yours.”
9. As you start developing your immunity to turning down or deflecting these ad hoc and urgent requests from those around you, you must develop a disciplined approach to managing your own workload and keeping your priorities and accountabilities straight. This will keep you in good stead with your boss and keep you on track with your APR objectives. Taking control of what you do on an everyday basis will also allow you to manage how your résumé evolves as you make progress in your job and your career.
10. A proxy to ad hoc work people bring to you with urgent demands is when you volunteer to impromptu assignments. This happens in meetings where a topic is discussed and you want to show your value to the group and to impress those in the meeting by taking on a disputed issue in that meeting and commit to a date to completing it or agree to bringing the answer to the next meeting. Unless the item in question directly reflects on your work and unless your boss assigns you that task stemming from such a meeting avoid taking it on at all costs. People often volunteer for such assignments to increase their self-importance or to show how valuable they are to someone else. Stop feeling insecure and volunteering for such tasks. Manage them by making the right choices.

Oftentimes, we end up in situations of our own making. Once we create these situations then it gets increasingly more difficult to get out of them. So, using the tips provided here learn how to take control of your work that is important to your own welfare and learn how to say NO without even using that word.

Good luck!