Ch07b: Where people get Overloaded

The story of the “messy house” is an illustration of how small habitual actions can create massive results. The obvious solution, to clean it up, was overwhelming because appeared to be too large for anyone to do in one step. Motivation depends on how you represent the job to yourself. The tenants procrastinated on cleaning (for years), not because the job was impossible, but because it seemed impossible to them. There are many other examples where people get overloaded and say “impossible” when the reality is that a small habit everyday makes light work of even very large jobs.

Overload Procrastination with Schoolwork

This is a huge problem for traditional students, but even more so for correspondence students. Correspondent students do readings, written homework, exams, and large-scale term projects just as if they were attending a regular school. They have the advantage of being able to work at their own pace, but they don’t have any external monitors to ensure they keep up with the pace of the course. As deadlines seem far off, correspondent students often neglect readings scheduled for the first week, reasoning they can do them in the second. In the second week, they forget they need to do the readings, but it’s OK as the first quiz is 2 weeks away. So the pile of reading from the first two weeks adds to the third. It doesn’t take long before a student finds themselves so far behind, they start thinking it is impossible to catch up.

A Brazilian research group called “Education & Research” found 49.57% of students drop out of traditional universities before getting a bachelor’s degree. Online students had a higher 68.52% drop out rate for the same credentials (published Sept 2017). There are many reasons to drop out, but getting overwhelmed by the workload is one of the most common.

Overload Procrastination with Project Deadlines

Nothing bothers managers more than employees who don’t appear busy. If they are screwing around at the water cooler, chatting it up with other workers, they are not ‘doing their job’ and need a good kick in the ass.

In most industries work is cyclical. There are times when the workers have a lot to do and there are other times when they don’t. Managers abhor idle workers. After all the company is paying them to do a job, not just stand around. Worse yet, allowing staff to remain idle makes it look like the manager look bad. This led to the creation of “make work” assignments. “Make Work” assignment keep your people busy, but are of no real benefit for the company. It looks good when investors walk in and for accounting purposes.

Workers resent “make work” assignments. A competent employee sees themselves as a professional, a valued worker, doing valuable activities to make that company successful. It is demeaning punishment to take a motivated employee and assign them something that amounts to little more than a holding pattern.

While doing a “make work assignment” is better than being laid off, it’s hard to gain any job satisfaction when you know your results don’t matter. Not wishing to be tasked with a useless jobs, employees slow the pace of their regular assignments when the cycle slows down. This gives them the appearance of being busy and eats up time so managers don’t need to assign “make work” activities. Lower-level managers and supervisors appreciate reduced productivity during these slow cycles as it saves them the trouble of finding something else for them to do. Workers may even talk themselves into believing they are saving up energy for the rush.

The problem is people become used to the habits they practice. If workers are used to a slow rate of production, they consider it to be their standard. When a rush come in, the workers are less able to ‘kick into high gear,’ and are overwhelmed with the backlog. They get flustered and start making more mistakes. Now they have to fix past mistakes on top of dealing with new orders as they flood in. The boss, taking heat from angry customers, starts breathing down everyone’s neck and feels that micromanaging the workers will improve productivity. Workers speed up a little, but get even more stressed. They use up their sick days and talk about forming a union. These inconsequential snowflakes come down like a blizzard and task overload happens in short order. This can threaten the viability of the company.

Always do work that has Value

The wise employer is one who accounts for fluctuations in work flow. They know their business from the ground up having worked in the industry for a long time. Rather than pressing “make work” assignments, which have no value and are insulting to professional employees, the employer has a list of low urgency, high value maintenance tasks for slow periods. These task are low priority, yet by doing them they may prevent emergency situations down the road. A few examples could include: updating a procedure manual, fixing errors on the website, vetting marketing proposals, following up on customer reviews, researching competition, producing content for social media, creating press releases, or cleaning up internal records for tax audits, research and development on new product lines, suggesting improvements to optimize current procedures. In order for employees to take their job seriously, they should always engage in activities which add value to the company.

An excellent stereotype of a wise employer would be the captain of a large ship. Captains typically have many years as a career sailor and worked in many different departments on a ship. They also made a point to study ship operations, to gain a working knowledge of all other areas of the ship where they haven’t worked in. Captains almost never assign “make work” jobs, because ships require maintenance assignments all the time. Sailors may have dozens of low priority maintenance activities to keep them busy, but when an emergency happens (aka the ship is sinking), everyone knows to change jobs at the drop of a hat.

When staff see their work important, they see themselves as important. Maintenance may not be urgent, but they can prevent last minute emergencies (keeping financial records organized means it won’t be a major issue when an audit happens). When the busy season picks up, and swarms of orders rush in, well-trained staff members can automatically switch gears; placing maintenance projects on hold to work on high priority tasks. There is no stress and no need for management to whip their staff into shape. Rather than changing your pace based on changes in customer patterns, workers should be working at something every day at a consistent pace. They can always take pride that they are always doing something that adds value to the company.

Overload Procrastination on Bill Payments

Credit card companies love procrastination. People who pay off minimums (AKA procrastinating to pay off the original purchase) get nailed every month on interest charges. I usually pay off my full balance every month, though there was this one time I forgot. That little oops cost me $60. I remember being quite annoyed about this. You may think, “Who cares about $60 bucks? You should see my statement…” $60 bucks is a good meal at a restaurant, three box office movie tickets, a full tank of gas, or an evening of light drinking at the bar. Even if I gave away $60 to some random guy on the street, I would have a good feeling in doing something nice for another person. What did I “get” by being late on a payment and giving $60 to an impersonal credit card company? Nothing, not even a thank you; it was just added to the pile I got to pay next month.

Getting people to pay for their procrastination has become popular in billing practices. Utility companies, Internet providers, governments, furniture and automotive sales have jumped onto the bandwagon. Any business that offers “no money down, easy payments, don’t pay till next year,” has figured out that they can make loads of money on interest charges from procrastination. Our culture provides you with no end of opportunities to get into financial debt.

And what happens when an avalanche of overdue bills spill out of your mail box? You start feeling overwhelmed because paying for all those small purchases comes back to haunt you. Many people keep throwing a metaphoric bed sheet over their financial mess and pretend it isn’t there. Eventually, the mess grows and grows and becomes impossible to deal with. Bankruptcy is the financial equivalent of leaving a colossal mess at a rental apartment. It damages your reputation with financial institutions years after. Yet, clearing a debt through bankruptcy is only a temporary solution; the person keeps the same habitual spending patterns that got them into debt in the first place. Over time, they will create the same mess all over again.

Overload Procrastination on Divorce

In America, 50% of marriages end in divorce. It isn’t usually one extramarital affair which breaks the deal, but small issues that pick away at the relationship over time. Petty bickering, misunderstanding, lack of intimacy, use of household money, division of responsibility, changes in appearance, mismatched expectations, someone leaves the toilet seat up, or toothpaste open are all small annoyances. None of them can kill a relationship on their own, but they keep chipping and eroding at the relationship until it collapses. Eventually, one of the partners does something stupid which becomes the poster child of a thousand little problems.

Human relationships are not absolute. Like our minds, they are in a constant state of flux. Relationships are always getting stronger or weaker, but they never stay “constant”. If you want to do a spot check on the health of your relationship, consider how you feel the person and multiply that by 10,000. Do you feel super ultra-mega attracted to them, or are you thinking you would want to run for the hills? Note that all long-term relationships have ups and downs. Just because you feel negative about someone in the present doesn’t mean doom and gloom. It does mean there is a metaphoric pile of laundry on the floor and it’s getting bigger. When you are aware of the general direction you are going in, you can make different daily choices to change it. For important relationships those daily choices make dramatic differences to your emotional wellbeing, your confidence, and your health over the long haul.

Overload Procrastination on Health

In most circumstances, overload procrastination is just annoying, however procrastinating on health issues can be fatal. Many people still fear going to the dentist. They worry the worst will happen, imagining they will have numerous cavities, followed by needles, drilling and pain. They believe that if they put off the initial appointment, then they can pretend nothing is wrong for a bit longer. Untreated, cavities continue to get larger and deeper. Left too long, they can infect the root canal; becoming far more painful and far more expensive to deal with. Personally, I’m neither a fan of pain, nor huge dental fees. When I think about my teeth, I consider two options:

Option A: Go to the dentist today. Pay a few hundred, and have a little pain, get over it in a few days (or less). Recover savings in a few weeks. Worry about real issues.

Option B: Wait 6 months. Live with pain that becomes worse every day. Piss off everyone around you because you are always in a bad mood. Discover you have to go to the dentist anyway because you can no longer sleep from the pain. Have a long slow dental surgery that is as bad as your nightmares suggested and get slapped with a bill at the end which will put you thousands in the hole. Take a few years of paying interest charges to get rid of it and recover your savings.

Presented with the above 2 options, It doesn’t take me long to figure out that A is the better choice. Of course you could do what my past roommate did…

Option C: Not deal with it… ever.

As it turns out this was the most expensive choice. When I was younger, I rented spit apartments to keep rental costs down. One of my past roommates was a lovable new age sort, very wise and very intelligent. He had a dental issue with his upper right molar and never got it fixed. Every now and then his face would puff up like a basketball, and we would take him to emergency at the hospital for antibiotic shots to deal with blood poisoning caused by the abscessed tooth. I was very concerned for him after one such trip and argued with him at length to just go to a dentist and deal with it. He was far smarter than I and gave me an eloquent argument why there was no need to go. He was philosophically opposed to western medicine and felt he could use ‘healing energy’ to better effect.

Many years later, I heard that he died from systemic blood infection. He was in his early 40s at the time. The price he paid for option C was 40 to 60 years of his life. His death left me both sad and angry. I was sad because, while my ex-roommate was stubborn, he was also one of the more compassionate people I have ever come to know. He had a big heart, a wealth of wisdom and a light fun personality which danced like a song upon the wind. I am sad because the world was a better place with him in it. Why angry? A fucking toothache… Not seeing a dentist… screwing around allowing it to carry on for years… It was just a stupid way to die because it was so preventable.

Additional Note: I wish my late room mate simply dealt with his dental issue early rather than having endured years of pain and an early death. He really was a wonderful person. If you are concerned about saving yourself and your loved ones from serious dental issues, consider being proactive about it. There is a wonderful product I came across called ProDentim, which has the ability to rejuvenate the positive symbiotic bacteria cultures in your mouth. For more information click here. (Yes it is a sponsored link and if you find value in their product, know that some of the proceeds are going back to help out Angel 777. In the long run I believe that a small positive habit, like eating probiotic supplements, will ultimately save you from the pain and massive expense caused by huge cavities.