It’s been a while since I broke into a rant here, so buckle up!

The issue has to do with this new admin thing I’m doing. This semester, we’re basically transitioning from Predecessor, the person who has done the thing for many years, to me. There are some things I’m already doing this semester under Predecessor’s watchful eye, and let me tell you, sometimes I want to claw that eye out.

There are few things I hate more than someone looking over my shoulder, checking my work. But I understand that Predecessor means well, and they’re generally a nice and helpful individual, and I want to be respectful and deferential… So I grit my teeth. And make sure to stock up on enamel-fortifying toothpaste.

But yesterday, something almost made me lose my cool.

I am the kind of person who will sit down and book every last thing needed for conference travel within an hour, then absolutely refuse to think about said travel until the day of. I put scheduled events, even those that I look forward to, on my calendar, set a couple of reminders, and then do my best never to think about them until the reminders start going off. In contrast, my husband derives pleasure from the anticipation of an experience, such as a concert or a romantic overnight trip. (We do those now! Yay for having big kids!) But as much as I enjoy the events themselves, thinking about them too far in advance fills me with anxiety and makes me want to cancel everything.

At work, I strive to touch something as few times as possible, and preferably once. Open email, respond, done. The longer something takes up my mental real-estate, the more overwhelmed it makes me feel. On the upside, I am swift and decisive. On the downside, I am extremely impatient and I do not work well with people who like to take their time.

Yet Predecessor is one such person. Predecessor likes to start everything well in advance, revisit things many times, plan, think, optimize. And that’s fine; people should work however they want. The problem is that Predecessor has been putting pressure on me to start doing things in early October, nudging, coaxing, giving me exasperated electronic sighs, only for me to realize that, save for some relatively small things that I indeed did sometime in October, nothing else could even remotely be acted upon until late November.

So Predecessor, who likes to think and plan and revisit, has been basically pushing me according to their own timeline, which has caused me quite a bit of stress, given that all the many other facets of my job (or my life!) haven’t suddenly gone away. If I’d had my way, I would not have spent the last month wasting my energy or time on needless (to me!) planning, which really felt more like me spinning my wheels, when I could now sit down over no more than a week and bang it all out.

There are real deadlines, and then there are fictitious intermediate deadlines that some people thrive on setting for themselves. That’s fine for them, truly, but maybe they should leave the rest of us alone.