Since the beginning of September things have got busier week on week to a climax of the past fortnight where I have done work of some description every day since the Monday before last, sometimes finishing late at night, and I am exhausted. Today I have gone from babbling to full speed ahead. From laughing hysterically to crying as I walked between meetings.

In London this pace was the norm, not just for a month. I survived (by a thread) six months in a row of working 50-70 hours a week. So why am I so exhausted after only a month of being manic? Why can’t I take the pace anymore? Why does everyone else around me seem to be getting on fine despite also being under pressure, whilst I am overwhelmed and overtired and probably annoying the hell out of them all too.

People keep telling me I need to say ‘No’ to things and I need to delegate.

Firstly saying ‘No’. Not a problem… there are multiple things I have said ‘No’ to, or told people they will have to wait until Freshers week is over. For every thing I’ve completed there is probably another thing outstanding. I obviously now look so exhausted and emotional that no one is pointing out the things I haven’t done, or emails I haven’t read. Whereas I’m making a mental list of apologies as I go along.

And I do delegate. At one point in my previous job I got so good at delegating I had to ask members of my team to give work back to me because I’d run out of things to do! But in this job I don’t have a team, and I am surrounded by peers who have there own priorities and deadlines. I’m not the only one with a lot going on right now. I have delegated most of what I can to team assistants, and even something to my boss!!! But a lot of my tasks would require me having to explain and/or teach something which would take longer than doing it myself. At the moment that is a false economy (though when I am less busy I will up skill some people to do some of these jobs for the start of next academic year)

Why do I do this? Simply because I care. I care about the effort everyone has put in so far and I want to finish those jobs before the students arrive. I care about the mistakes I’ve made and I want people to know that I haven’t deliberately forgotten about them. I care about making sure that the people around me know they’ve done a great job and delivering results that communicate their hard work. I can’t just come to work and do a job for the sake of doing a job. And if I stop caring that is normally a sign of depression. So in some ways I’d rather be caring, working too hard and temporarily exhausted, then uncaring and properly ill again.

I recently retook the Keirsey test on personality, it’s about 12 months since I last did it and I’m still an ENFP (Idealist Champion). I think I’m stuck with that one! There’s an interesting article on the Keirsey website about dealing with stress at work. It has a paragraph about Champions which I find scarily accurate:

“The Champion is usually a bundle of energy, but they can become exhausted if they are overloaded with work. They also will experience stress if their values and principles are violated and they see others in the company being hurt by policies that kill the human spirit. Then they become hypersensitive to what is going on around them. Facts become exaggerated. They have feelings of paranoia and may withdraw. To regain their equilibrium, meditation will help. Kindness and support by others, but not patronization, will help them get back to normal.”

You can take the Keirsey test for free at http://www.keirsey.com

Anyway, next week brings Freshers Week. And whilst it will still be busy it will be fun too. Two days of Freshers Fayre will give me time away from mentally demanding tasks and hopefully I’ll avoid having many more deadlines before the following week. Outside of work I’ll have my new tutees and will need my brain power to win the quiz on Tuesday night!!!

More importantly is getting my life back. My priority the week after will be returning to regular exercise, meditation and writing. The three things that keep me sane!