XYKADEMIQZ

Predecessor Stressor

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.


xykademiqz

6 responses to “Predecessor Stressor”

  1. nicoleandmaggie Avatar
    nicoleandmaggie

    I’m not sure if I’m more like your predecessor or you, but I’ve been having similar not quite conflicts with my department head who likes to leave things to the last minute. My thing is 1. I have to get these damn mandatory meetings scheduled early because if you put it off, you can’t get everybody in a room at the same time prior to the deadline and then you miss the deadline. And 2. I want to get things off my plate and on someone else’s plate ASAP, so I want to process things right away to give the next person in the chain as much time as I can. When 1 and 2 aren’t done quickly (as they often weren’t with my predecessor), then we’ve missed deadlines because meetings can’t be scheduled in time or we don’t have the required paperwork to have the meeting in time and the meeting has to be rescheduled.

  2. xykademiqz Avatar
    xykademiqz

    If someone needs me to do a substantive amount of work, then I need to know the actual deadline for it by which they need it, and don’t want to be bothered in the interim. For example, there are always grad students who send panicked emails about their letters of recommendation for grad school several weeks before the actual deadline. I won’t forget; I’ve never forgotten. I try my best to reassure them. But there’s the real deadline and then there’s their anxiety deadline, and I have way too much on my plate to adjust to the latter.

    But things like “Let’s schedule the meeting early” seem like they require really minimal time, so I don’t see why someone couldn’t do it early, other than anticipating huge changes in availability. Like you, I prefer to schedule stuff ASAP, probably earlier than most folks, because I know it will be hard later, and my goal in life is to minimize chasing other people via email.

    Basically, I want to touch something as few times as possible rather than repeatedly, and I want to be left alone to organize time if I am to deliver something nontrivial by the deadline. Too many intrusions and/or arbitrary check-ins and I get very stabby.

  3. nicoleandmaggie Avatar
    nicoleandmaggie

    Exactly– I want it off my plate and on someone else’s! I want scheduling to be easy and not impossible. I want other people to have time to do their things based on what all they have due, whether that means getting it in early or on time so long as it’s not late. (So I will write the meeting report right after the meeting rather than right before the deadline, meaning faculty have a week to approve it if they want and the department head may have more time to write their report depending on when the meeting was.)

  4. BioBrains Avatar
    BioBrains

    I guess this comes with the territory when you take over from someone and plan for a bit of overlap so they are still there to give you the gist of what it will be like. I’d say: wrap up this period as soon as you can and then just officially transition to you and your ways. At least you now already know how you want to do it in the future, so your future self will thank you.

  5. undine Avatar
    undine

    I am absolutely like you: book it/email and forget it, because otherwise I spend all the time thinking about it, very unproductively.

    I would have to drop your predecessor down a well.

  6. attackinghacking Avatar
    attackinghacking

    Possibly relevant to your service situation and almost certainly of interest: https://wordsinspace.net/2024/12/13/the-limits-of-refusal/

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