Introduction: At our workplace or in our personal life, people are trapped in situations where they have endless tasks, and they work till they are super exhausted. As time goes by, they find themselves "working for nothing"...

Welcome to our Global Reach-out program on Workplace Strategy.

Recently, I saw a report on the Korean News media. According to a survey conducted by the Korean employment portal “Inruit”, 2,971 adults were asked to choose a phrase to express their feelings at the workplace during the year 2018. "Busy with too much work" topped the list, followed by "Over exhausted" and "useless effort".

What a sad reality! At the workplace, we always have endless tasks, and because of that, we become super exhausted. As the time goes by, we look back, and it seems that “all the effort we put into our work is meaningless”.

As I reflect on this news, it reminds me that many office workers are busy with so many work tasks to the point of exhaustion. I can't help but think of Jesus' rebuke to Martha: Martha! Martha! You worry and fret about many things, but only one thing is necessary...

So, friends, has it ever happened to you that you have no time to focus on that one thing that’s necessary because you are too preoccupied with too many other things? Working on endless tasks could be a problem for anyone in this world. We need to take it seriously and get ourselves out of this abnormal state.

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There are a couple of reasons why we are facing endless work. Today, we will focus on one of them - the teamwork in a company.

It might sound strange: Isn’t team work a good thing? Wouldn’t we get more work done if we work as a team?

Nowadays, it seems that working as a team makes a company successful. And on our resume, we always emphasize that “I am a great team player”.

Could this be a problem?

According to data collected over two decades by Connected Commons, an American research group, most managers now spend more than 85% of their time on emails, meetings, and phone calls. Over the past decade, the amount of time managers and employees spend on collaborative work has soared by more than 50%. Well, collaboration has many benefits for enterprises. It helps enterprises to have better innovative abilities, deal with customers more promptly, etc. But at the same time, when we spend more time to participate in brainstorming sessions, attend meetings, and respond to requests for help from other departments, we have less time to concentrate on our own work. Even worse, in order to accommodate our coworkers, we often have to work overtime, and face endless work all the time.

The Connected Commons team points out that too much collaboration hurts both enterprises and their workers.

There are two types of damage caused by too much collaboration at work for employees: People can have panic attacks when suddenly facing too much extra work; or they may crumble when they take too many responsibilities over time.

The reason that we have panic attacks could be due to the fact that we are suddenly required to work on a new project; or our coworker asks for some help out of nowhere. Therefore, we suddenly face a lot of extra work. For example, you have a full work-life, but suddenly your boss has some new ideas, and want to puts you in charge to apply them, and it could be an opportunity for you at the workplace. What are you going to do?

Most of us would choose to work on this new task. But when we are overloaded, we can start to become over stressed.

Compared to what’s mentioned earlier, having panic attacks due to sudden new work, it is more common for us to be slowly harmed by our day-to-day tasks. As we work longer in the company, we get to know more people from our workplace, and we receive more work requests from others. And a person with more experience and better abilities at work will be required to work on more tasks before they know it.  

As employees, when we are over stressed all the time facing endless tasks, we can be broken.

And how could “too much collaboration” hurt an organization?  

According to the survey, collaborative work is unevenly distributed to the employees of the company, and this is more likely to happen in smaller businesses. In most cases, 20 to 35 percent of value-added collaboration comes from only 3 to 5 percent of employees. In other words, if there are 100 people in a company, valuable collaborative work usually falls on the shoulders of three to five of them. But why does this happen?

Researchers found that in every organization, there are certain employees who are capable of doing extra work, and help their co-workers on the job. Because of this, they are more likely to get promoted, or get involved in more important jobs in the company. Isn’t it a good thing to have employees with this positive attitude? But recent research conducted by the University of Iowa found that although the "top collaborators" promote team performance the most compared to other team members, since they are on heavy duty, once they quit the company or are sick at work, the project will be slowed down or even stopped. And because these “top collaborators” are doing so much more extra work compared to other employees, they become less efficient when doing their work because they are too tired. And they are more likely to quit the job when they are over-fatigued.

Because “over-collaboration” is so common these days, employees are required to always be there when their boss or co-worker comes looking for them.

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So, does that mean that we have to “steal time” from our colleagues or our bosses? With this mentality, they will become our "imaginary enemies", which will lead to a defensive mentality towards people and cause trouble in workplace relationships. In fact, the reason that we are doing extra work is more likely caused by our work flow instead of the demands from others in our workplace.

Do we have an urgent and important grid in our work and life?

If we think about Martha and Mary, we will see that, given the same circumstances, one of them is focused on the most important things. One gets bogged down by endless to-do lists and seemingly urgent needs.

What kind of choice should we make?

Of course, company managers have a responsibility to allocate duties and optimize collaboration, but we also have to take responsibility for our own time and actively take action to improve our own efficiency and quality of work. Researchers from the Connected Commons team suggest there are two things we can do in the workplace.

First, we need to analyze the reasons why we are overworked. The most important thing here is to identify our motivations for taking on that extra work -- do we genuinely want to help others, or do we want to maintain a good reputation for competence? Or do we fear losing control? Or it is just hard to say “no” to others?

Next, we need to take a look at all the collaborative work we are working on right now, figure out how many hours a week we are spending on collaborative work, and see if there’s a more effective way to participate in these projects.

We should always be aware if we are wasting other people's time, too. Every time we ask a co-worker for a favor or to run a meeting, we need to ask: Is it necessary? Can it be done more efficiently?

We all have a limited amount of time and energy. To engage in one thing means to let go of others. So we need to ask: What is most important to me? What is my specialty? What is the greatest value I can provide to the organization? We need focus on the most important tasks, the work where our strengths and values are played out. Then we can adjust and simplify our to-do list. Instead of trying to do everything by ourselves, we need to let others develop their abilities and give them opportunities to perform these tasks.

Going back to our previous example, should we take on a new project when we are already overloaded? Does this new project line up with my long-term career goals? By juggling my current job with new opportunities, have I fallen into a trap of greed or fear? What will the cost be for balancing the job?

Apostle Paul reminds us in Ephesians 5:15-17: Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.     

In this passage, Paul reminds us that "cherishing time" and "seizing the opportunity" are closely related. Cherish the time, to seize the opportunity; Seizing the opportunity is to cherish time. Today, the New Year is almost here. What is the most important thing we want to grasp? May God give us the wisdom to stay awake in the midst of the incessant noise and not be confused. Let’s keep our focus on what's important and what's good, and avoid the trap of trying to catch everything but ending up with nothing.

I hope you found this discussion helpful. Please tune in next time as we continue to explore how we can live out our faith in our jobs on “Workplace Strategy.”