Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm specializing in helping teams and organizations optimize their working experience. In my last episode, number 737, I talked about how burnout is on fire these days. And yeah, pun nearly always intended on my end. And I shared a few of my favorite

strategies for refining how we're getting our work done to help keep that burn at bay. Because even

when we're feeling overworked or overwhelmed, saying no just isn't always an option. In that episode,

some of the strategies I shared included advising, repurposing, and collaborating.

Today, I've got a few more for you, because who doesn't love lots of choices.

Remember, not all of these will be appropriate for every situation.

Be thoughtful about who is asking for what purpose and what's at stake.

And let those answers guide your choosing.

Okay, let's dive in. The next refined strategy is renegotiate timing, because here's a thing that

happens like all the time. We claim a priority, like a competitor put out a new product and so now

we need to refine our product so they

don't nab all our customers. So we generate a bunch of work designed to get our product suite

looking shiny and new, ASAP. And then something new happens, like a customer spots a security

risk in our existing product. So we generate a bunch of work designed to find and close that hole.

Also, ASAP.

Know what we don't do very often?

Question whether both of these are indeed achievable ASAP.

Priorities absolutely change, and we need to be willing and able to flex accordingly.

When our plates are full and something else gets

added, we need to have the discipline to renegotiate our timelines. A security risk doesn't mean

we have to say no to innovating on our existing products, but it may mean we just need to postpone

it for a beat while we address the more emergent challenge. How many things are your plate

...