I've definitely had cases where the manager (and on lots of cases, the CEO) tried to "turn those conversation around" and bullshit me.

The thing they wanted me to do was maximum priority, but there was also some other totally unpredictable thing (often support related) that I also had to take care of. The higher-up was 100% sure it wasn't a real problem and assumed I was exaggerating the situation.

The solution to the problem of lack of trust is of course to convince them, or to leave. If you can't make changes that increase your productivity, you'll become stressed and burned out, and will still not be able to do enough. It is a decision they made.

If you're doing something you think is important ("other totally unpredictable thing (often support related)") at work and your boss says they think it isn't important ("The higher-up was 100% sure it wasn't a real problem and assumed I was exaggerating the situation.") then I would assume your boss is right and you are wrong and act accordingly (start ignoring or delaying dealing with these support-related things when you are busy with the "higher priority" work). Either it will turn out your boss was right and it won't be a big deal, or it will turn out your boss was wrong, and it will be clear to everyone, and before you know it a big pronouncement will come down from up high saying that that "unimportant" thing actually is very important.

And in the end it’s you again who has to rush to take care for the suddenly important item. You simply cannot win.

Sure, but "I doubt that's that big of a problem" is very different from "isn't important".

But your boss needs that feedback loop or they will continue to be wrong.

Let me try again:

The previous CEO of the story wasn't wrong about what's important at all. Only about how much time it takes. He considered everything important and maximum priority, but didn't believe the "previous thing" was taking 80% of the time of the team. I couldn't tell the team to "drop the previous task" like the other post suggested: it was also maximum priority.

"Important" and "Takes too much time" are very different.

He didn't think it was important to put in the extra time then. He felt adequate results could be achieved with less time, and that the extra time to make sure quality and completeness was up to some standard was unnecessary.

So, try it. See how well you can do in 0.8 times the time. Probably not as well, but maybe still adequate for the boss's standards, or maybe not. Either way the impasse is solved, as both you and your boss will see exactly what can in fact be done in 0.8 the time.

> Which of these would you like me to deprioritize in order to work on this new thing?”

At most places, the answer is going to be “you need to prioritize all of it. Oh, and by the way, here is even more work to put on your plate!”

I think my answer to that is something of the kind of: “Work is going to be prioritized one way or another. If you don’t tell me which one you want me to work on first I’ll pick the one I like best, and we’ll see which of the problems never gets finished.”

I think this only works if you’ve already set boundaries on your time though.

I usually work on the latest task, last-in-first-out system. If someone has a higher priority they should bug be more to get bumped up. The reason is that I want to finish at least a few tasks without delays. For large tasks I ask them to select the ordering.

There are occasionally times when everything is critical. Often this is in the early stages of survival for a company.

If this is a chronic problem, or it's an established company, though, you realistically have two solutions that don't lead to burnout:

1. Don't deliver everything you're asked for

2. Find a new job

Once that culture is established it's extremely hard to change. It certainly will not fix itself.

I agree completely. I was working for a company that had been around for over 20 years and when that happened, I did both 1&2. It was pretty clear that I had made all the improvements I could there and that nothing would get any better.

I love repeating the phrase “if it’s all top priority than none of it is top priority”

I worked at a company like this (for f...ing 10 years!), beeing fired at the end was the best thing that could happen to me, it lead me to a much less stressfull job with much better pay

> Yes, drop those other things

or

> Well just do this in like the fastest, shittiest way possible

:shrug:

We can prioritize and things do get prioritized but if you have 40 hours of time and 80 hours of work, some ball is getting dropped.

> Yes, drop those other things

Reminds me of a previous manager I had. He would come with a 20 to 60 hours task, and quite reasonably say "that's urgent, drop anything else and focus on this for as long as you need".

The only problem is that he did that about twice a day.