I haven’t written anything in a while because it’s been a really hard few months. My health has taken a turn for the worse with a new condition – also caused by my broken immune system that seems to greatly prefer attacking my body than foreign invaders – and I honestly haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since late-February. Since March, I’ve been to seven MDs and PAs, have received five different diagnoses for the same malady, and have been on three different courses of prednisone, with the current one set to last through most of the summer. The whole thing also set off a major flare of my connective tissue disease and the prednisone has left me barely able to tolerate eating more than pasta and crackers. With each wrong diagnosis, I had to change my mental model of myself and my life as each would have required major, but different, lifestyle changes, but the final and most definitive diagnosis (given to me by a very knowledgeable sub-specialist and professor at an academic center) is by far the most life-limiting. I’ve barely left the house in the 5 weeks since I got the diagnosis – which is essentially a severe immune reaction to UV light – and even have to avoid windows and fluorescent lights. I’ve been working from home, mostly with the blackout curtains drawn. And even with all that and the immunosuppression, I’ve not recovered yet. It’s frankly been a waking nightmare.
In the middle of all of this, I had a colleague take their frustration with the overwork they have been experiencing in their job out on me in a deeply mean and sarcastic email that left me literally shaking and in tears. While, upon reflection, I could see that their outburst wasn’t really about me (and they did apologize later – well, for the tone of their email), it was clear from the email that they thought they were the only one with a high workload, the only person struggling, while people like me weren’t actually working hard at all. I don’t doubt that their workload is unreasonably high, but that isn’t the fault of non-managers like me since I can’t dictate other people’s workloads. But also, that day I was working a full day on two hours of sleep after well over a month of nights like that. I’d also gotten one of the (possibly wrong, though still in the mix) diagnoses just hours before and this one was an incurable and life-threatening condition. I felt like I was falling apart, but was still showing up and trying to do my best. This colleague didn’t know that, but they shouldn’t have had to. We’ve had a friendly relationship for eleven years and that should have earned me some charitable reading.
We should never, ever, assume that other people with whom we work have it better than us or are doing less than us. It’s nearly impossible to know what our colleagues’ workloads look like. Maybe they are working harder than you are. Maybe they’re doing a lot less. Maybe they are also an overburdened caregiver, or are dealing with a chronic illness, or are going through a messy divorce, or have a parent who is dying, or are dealing with severe depression and are barely keeping their head above water. Some people loudly share their busyness like it’s a badge of honor, humble-bragging about the number of meetings they have in a day or the number of projects they are working on or the number of appointments they have with students, but most people just do their jobs as best they can and don’t broadcast any of it. Most of our work is invisible. No one but me and the members of the committee I chair (and now all of you!) know that the report I’ll be sending out on Monday describing the results of a survey we did of Spanish speakers at my college was 98% my work (even though there are six people total on the committee and I did ask for help at several points in the process – ok, now I am complaining) so that massive lift is largely invisible. The reality in libraries and in most knowledge work is that you’ll never really know for sure how hard everyone around you is working and, if you’re their peer, there’s no reason to even contemplate it. Comparison is toxic. It makes you brittle and resentful. It also feeds into scarcity thinking. Work isn’t a competition. Focus on doing your best work and set boundaries that keep you from taking on more than you can handle.
But I do get it. I remember when I was addicted to overwork, I felt resentful towards colleagues who I felt were not working as hard as I was. But it wasn’t their fault that I was overworking. Overworking is both a personal choice and a management failure. Given the tremendous organizational costs of burnout, managers should be protecting their direct reports from overwork, but I’ve never once had a boss who did. I’ve never had a boss tell me I was doing enough or question my taking on another project or committee, but I’ve certainly had bosses ask me to do more when I already felt overloaded or refuse to help me prioritize or jettison things when I had too much on my plate. Having more on your plate than you could reasonably do, known as time poverty in the literature, has actually been shown to increase the risk of depression and anxiety in employees. Even if you have good boundaries, time poverty is a stressful and erosive thing because we all naturally want to please people and meet deadlines. We don’t want to fail. But giving people more than they can reasonably do in their job sets them up for constant feelings of personal failure and resentment towards others whom they perceive as having less on their plates (whether that is true or not). If you’re trying to burn your employees out, ensuring they are in a constant state of time poverty is the perfect recipe.
When I was a manager, I saw part of my role as making sure my direct reports weren’t taking on too much – and I had a really passionate bunch of direct reports, so the struggle was real! I remember talking with one employee about a committee she wanted to join and asking her if she really felt being on it was worth the additional workload. In the end, she realized it wasn’t. So many of us are always haunted by a nagging feeling that we aren’t doing enough, even when we’ve probably already taken on too much. For me, it feels like the ghost of my work addiction calling to me, and I find myself constantly battling against its siren song. A good manager should be there to support you in that. If you have too much on your plate and your manager is not helping you lighten the load, they have failed you. Don’t take it out on your non-manager peers who probably have their own workload stressors.
I have a friend the library whose workload has ballooned, but she is working to set healthy boundaries. She has let go of some things or told people that things will just take longer. She’s managing expectations brilliantly. When the work day is done for her, it’s done. She and I are both people-pleasers who are trying to set better boundaries at work and I have found her approach really inspiring. I still do worry too much about letting people down, even as my body falls apart around me. But I look back on pre-pandemic me and I am proud of the progress I’ve made. And I can see now that having healthier boundaries made me a better colleague because I don’t compare workloads and I don’t feel any resentment toward anyone. We’re all contributing as best we can to supporting students at our college. We’re all doing good work. We all deserve grace.
But now my relationship with that colleague who took their frustrations out on me is totally broken. I do forgive them because I feel compassion for their situation, but I don’t know how I can ever feel safe around them again. We used to have a cheerful, friendly bantering kind of working relationship, but I’m always going to be scared and trepidatious in our interactions now. I’m always going to worry about setting them off. I still feel sick over the whole thing. And that sucks.
Let’s remember that when there are workload inequities or when the load on us feels too great, it’s either our fault for taking on more than we can handle, the fault of our managers for not protecting us from overwork and burnout, or a combination of the two. It is not the fault of colleagues who have better boundaries. It is not the fault of colleagues who know when they are doing enough and know how to say “no.” It is not the fault of colleagues who put work aside at the end of the workday, even if they didn’t get things done. Those people should be admired and emulated. The only people who benefit from us sniping at our colleagues are the managers who are neglecting their duty of care to their employees by not ensuring they don’t have more on their plates than they can reasonably handle.
