I Said No. And I Feel Like A Failure.

A couple months ago I came to the realization that I was working way too much. It didn’t bother me much at the time – after all, my personal life was falling apart, my weekends consisted of babysitting and/or staying in bed all day, and graduate school, while it kept me busy, was becoming more of a “let’s get this finished” type of pursuit. Work seemed to be the most productive use of my time, I had enough of it to fill 45-50 hours a week at least, and I felt like I was good at it.

Lately, though, I’ve been trying to say no more. Not to things that are part of my job, but no to all those things people ask me to do because I’m available and I’m a good worker. Or more to the point, things that I don’t know how to do or things that I suspect will fail – like editing together video from five different sources for one international promo effort or moderating a live webcast and online book discussion.

Want me to write something? Sure. Edit that? No problem. Layout that brochure? Consider it done.

Rent video equipment, shoot and edit video, and have it embedded in a Flash movie? Hell no.

Ok, so I don’t say “hell no,” but I do say “I don’t feel comfortable doing that because that’s really not my skill set. I’d be glad to learn but it will take much longer than the time we have for this project. Can we bring in a professional who specializes in this?”

Diplomatic, I thought the first couple times (these requests have been growing in frequency lately), but today I was in a meeting with a handful of people and I thought I would cry after saying no. I said “I can’t pull that off.” And I felt like a complete and total failure.

I realized that I was looking at my work in terms of a few things that probably aren’t the best measures of my contributions:

• dealing with an unruly workload – look at all that’s on my plate, and I still come through for you!
• quantity of projects completed – whether it took five minutes or two months, it’s all part of some master list that will be used to evaluate me
• working at warp speed – oh, that will only take me five minutes
• covering my work and someone else’s – do you want me to take some of this off your plate and let you keep all the credit for it?
• reacting to the chaotic nature of my job – the willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve goals I may or may not understand

I’m fortunate to have a bit of job security right now. I’m the only person in my office who does what I do, and I know I’m an asset. So why am I working myself in the ground to prove that I can do anything they throw at me? Why don’t I just focus on doing my job (and all that it encompasses) really, really well? Why don’t I write letters, set them aside, and come back to them a couple days later to make them the best they can be? Why don’t I give my bosses three versions of a design to choose from instead of presenting whatever I could throw together in the two hours I worked late?

Part of me thinks it’s the new grad/intern state of mind – I’m just so happy to be here and I want to make sure everyone’s happy to have me. And the easiest way to do that is to do every bit of work everybody gives me. But really, one of the liberating things about being an 8-5, administrative professional is that I have a very specific job description. And it’s a good thing to stick to it and make sure I do it really well.

On the flip side, as new, off-the-wall, out-of-the-box opportunities present themselves, I’m not going to rush to say “No that’s not my job” to all of them. If it’s something I legitimately think I could learn and do well or something I’m interested in (and I have the time) I just might give it a shot. I guess the key now is recognizing which requests are “opportunities” and which are just more work than I should be handling.

So, how far does your actual work stray from your job description? Do you say no when it does?