Module 5 Lesson 3 - Read

Read: Doing Your Best in a Group

Overview

Working in a group can be a frustrating experience. Almost everyone has been in a group setting where only one or two people contribute all the work or one person tries to be overly controlling of other members. This lesson will provide some tips on how to avoid being a control freak, avoid procrastination, set reasonable goals, and provide incentives to reach your goals.

How to Avoid Being a Control Freak

A control freak is someone who feels a need to control everything a group does. Often they try to do everything themselves and don’t allow others in the group to help. There are three things you can do to avoid that: ask for help, admit when you are having a hard time letting go, and offer to help someone instead of commandeering their task.

First, ask for help. When you take over a situation, you can overwhelm yourself with work. The group is there for a reason, so when this happens, ask others to help you. It isn’t a failure on your part to need help from others.

Second, admit that you have a hard time letting go. It can be difficult to tell someone that you don’t want help — for whatever reason. So, tell them you are struggling to let others help you, and talk through why you don’t want their help. Talking to someone about it can really open you up to figuring out a solution.

Finally, offer to help. Don’t just start doing things. Rather than taking over another group member’s work and doing the task yourself, ask if they need help. Check to see what they need rather than assuming you know best. Listen to what they have to say. If the person says they don’t need help, trust that they can do the task that has been assigned to them. It is okay not to be involved with every part of the process in group work.

Avoiding Procrastination

Procrastination is putting off work rather than accomplishing tasks in a timely, organized manner. As you get closer and closer to deadlines, procrastination can cause you to overload your schedule, increasing your stress level and decreasing the quality of work you produce. This section will provide some tips on how to avoid procrastination so that you can maximize your productivity in a group setting.

First, come up with a timetable. Set up a schedule of what you need to accomplish and when you plan to do certain things. You need to follow this schedule, so it’s important to understand what a reasonable amount of work is. Don’t set out small tasks that leave you with a lot of work left at the end, but don’t overload yourself early with tasks that are too large to manage.

Next, seek accountability from your work group. Tell the group leader, or someone in the group that you trust, that you struggle with procrastination. Share the schedule you have made for yourself, and ask for help sticking to it. When they help you and prompt you to get back to work, don’t get upset with them. Remember that you asked them to do so, and that it is for your own good.

Next, reward yourself for staying on schedule. When you accomplish everything you need to do in a day, reward yourself with a treat. Or take some time for an activity you enjoy but rarely get to do. If you have something to look forward to, it makes it easier to accomplish tasks.

Finally, take breaks between tasks. Burnout is a real problem. If you charge through one task to the next, you risk serious harm to your health. Between tasks, take a few minutes — no more than five or ten — to walk around, get a drink, stretch, and not work. Giving yourself breaks helps you feel less worn down while you continue working through your day.

Reasonable Goal Setting

Setting goals to work toward is all well and good, but if you don’t know how to set attainable goals, it won’t help as much. This section will give you three tips to keep in mind when making goals. These tips can ensure that goals are manageable and will be helpful in finishing the overall task.

First, know your limits. Does it take you two hours to put together one part of a presentation? Then, don’t schedule yourself to do four parts of the presentation in a day. Knowing how long it takes you to do things and how to put your schedule together in a way that doesn’t overload you is important. Biting off more than you can chew can set you up to fail in a work setting where you don’t want or need that.

Second, know what needs to be done. Clarify your goal and the tasks you need to do to get there. If you are unclear of what is expected of you, then you can never hope to schedule effectively.

Finally, identify specific steps within the overall task that need to be accomplished in a specific order. If you are writing a paper for class, don’t just schedule a day where you write the paper. Instead, schedule separate times to write the introduction, the first main point, the second, and then the conclusion.

Incentives and Reaching Your Goals

Incentives motivate us to do things. An incentive might be a paycheck or a nice dinner with friends. Incentivizing yourself is a great way to ensure you actually accomplish your goals. One such incentive is down time. Reward yourself, not only with small breaks, but big ones, too. If you have a hard day and accomplish a lot, give yourself the evening off. Don’t worry about the project. Rest is important, and taking a step away can reignite your motivation to work even harder when you get back. It is important to keep in mind that rewards should be proportional to the task. If you have a hard goal and reward yourself with a small three minute break, you won’t get your release. You want to make sure the reward matches the work. That way, when the work becomes hard, you have something to look forward to. A reward gives you something for that last push to finish.

 

Expand: The Importance of Self-Care in Team Settings

Discover

Working in a group can cause stress and burnout. This section will identify some steps to ensure that you take care of yourself and perform your best.

 

Self-Care

The only way you can contribute to your team is if you are in good mental and physical condition. The best way to ensure you feel your best is to regularly take care of yourself. It is important that you recognize when you start to feel burnt out. If you’re tired all the time, stressed, or unable to motivate yourself to work on what you need to get done, you might be burnt out. If so, it’s exceptionally difficult to focus on the task at hand, and the work you do manage to get accomplished is not as good as you usually produce. When this happens, you need to take some time for yourself.

Make sure you eat right and eat enough. Make sure you rest often and are getting enough sleep. Make time for a healthy social life and do the things you enjoy doing in your down time. Your work can’t be the only thing you do in a day if you expect to stay healthy and put your best work forward.

Once you recognize that you’re burnt out, take steps to help yourself feel better. You need to make sure you take stock of why it happened in the first place. Were you doing too much? Not giving yourself enough time? You need to figure out why it happened and adjust your schedule to prevent it from happening again.

Finally, take a step back and look at the big picture. What things can you change to take better care of yourself? Maybe you need to talk to your boss about sharing some of your responsibilities. Maybe you need to change your daily schedule to include more productive work time. These larger changes can be difficult to make, but if you can find ways to make the needed adjustments, you will be rewarded by feeling much better about how you handle your work.

 

Module 5 Lesson 3 of 4