To be able to relax, I have to be able to divide my time. In my line of work, sometimes this is not possible. I deal with clients that live in different time zones and often I deal with people who work unusual hours. They may try to contact me at any time of the day, from 7am to midnight. These questions could deal with any range of issues, so it’s often difficult to decipher whether these calls may be important or not.
Whether these are clients or people that you work with individually, there are certain jobs where you will get calls in the evenings.
There are also jobs that will continue to call you, even when on vacation! Often the amount of calls that you get in your time away from the office will depend on how big your office is and how much of your work runs directly through you.
To avoid burnout and ultimately increase your work efficiency when you are in the office, it is important to allow yourself some free time. This includes not visiting work email, but more importantly, it includes not answering non-critical calls from the office or clients when you’re not at work.
Not answering a call can be a very tough decision for most people. There is an innate desire to avoid upsetting a customer or a co-worker and to avoid being rude. But step back and think for a minute, if this peson is calling you during your off hours, they are not being respectful of you or your time. A person/client who is not respectful of your time is often more work than they are worth, and I’d be willing to bet that many of these calls are about non-critical issues.
It’s important to establish to the people you work with that your spare time is your spare time and you work time is your work time. If you pick up the phone every time that you’re not at work, then people begin to assume that you’re always available. Instead of getting calls like “the cinema is on fire”, the calls will begin to be about “i can’t find a stapler”. It’s easier to call you and ask a question than it is to just do the job on their own.
This goes for clients as well. Calling you at 11PM for anything other than “the lead singer of the band was hit by lightning…we can’t make it” is unacceptable! Hotel reservations can be taken care of in the morning, sound requirements can be emailed, and questions about directions can be covered by email as well. If you answer the phone all the time for your clients, eventually they will call you with every little question.
The point is to really get away from work if you are away.
I know that many of us carry our cell phones on us all the time, and people at work have our cell phone. We give it to clients also, and this is fine. But you need to establish some hours where it is not acceptable to call.
Let them leave a message and screen the message before calling them back. Don’t call back unless you determine that the call is important and needs to be handled immediately.
You can also add a message to your Voice Mail asking them to email you anything important. This adds an extra layer of documentation, and you can limit the conversation as much as you want rather than listening to someone talk your ear off while you’re trying to eat dinner with your family/friends.
I know this will be difficult for a lot of people, but it’s important to understand that if you don’t do this people become less respectful of your time. That’s not good for anyone. If you want your co-workers or students to handle issues on their own and develop into strong independent workers, let them handle the problems when you’re not there.
And remember, the clients that call at night are clients, not people you babysit. They can wait till tomorrow.
Burnout is a kind of job depression and is a motivational problem. A person struggling with burnout is demotivated, dispirited, depressed – DOWN. The person caught up in the burnout cycle finds it more and more difficult to perform and increasingly dreads going to work.
Burnout is caused by feelings of uncontrollability. Powerlessness, damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don’t situations. It is prevented by developing feelings of control over the job – which is an on-going process.
Developing a sense of “personal power” or “controllability” is essential for preventing or overcoming burnout. When you work in your “spare time” – especially if it is out of your home setting limits is essential. If you don’t, then phone calls and other interruptions can become overwhelming and crowd out the work you need to get done.
It is a mistake to think of callers as “not respecting you”. Actually, the person is simply trying to accomplish something on their end. The problem is that by answering the phone you are “rewarding” the person for the call. To blame the person for calling contributes to the feeling of loss of control. And it is the sense of “uncontrollability” that causes burn out – i.e., destroys motivation.
By owning the “problem” you take control of it and are a step ahead in avoiding burnout. Setting limits is a sub-set of being assertive. Telling co-workers and customers when you will take calls, lays out the “game plan” so they know what to expect and what the limits are. Then you must enforce your limits. Certain voice messages help. Turning off the phone may help. Setting specific times to receive calls and when you will return calls helps. Saying “No” is important and it may be helpful to take an assertiveness workshop to learn how. Time management training is also important. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel. Take a class and learn some helpful techniques.
If you catch yourself blaming the caller, this is a signal that you’re losing control. People call. It is how you handle calls and structure your time and answering calls that is important.
For considerable information on job burnout, the symptoms, burnout quizzes, and what to do to prevent it or turn it around – go to my site at docpotter.com