Erin Merideth 0:01
Erin, welcome to unlearning work, where we empower you to redesign your job by rethinking work habits, behaviors and strategies. I'm your host. Erin Merideth, a work behavior enthusiast and leadership strategist, join me as I explore various work related topics and provide practical insights and real life examples. We'll examine the nature of work from the ground up and deliver bite size episodes with actionable advice twice a month. Hi. Welcome to the unlearning work Podcast. Today, we're talking about why work gets so hard and what actually makes it easier. When people say work is hard, the advice is usually simple, manage your time better, communicate more, be more flexible. That advice sounds helpful, but it really misses the real issue, because most people aren't struggling with effort or motivation. They're struggling with how work moves between people and when work moves poorly, Even good people get tired fast. Let's start with where work starts to break down. To understand why work feels heavy, we have to stop looking at individual effort and start looking at how work actually moves between people. Most problems don't begin when someone does the work. They begin at the moment work is handed off. That is because often work shows up without any shape, and that's the first place energy leaks. So these types of requests sound like, can you take this? Can you help with this? Can you look into this? Those questions that's all missing shape. The real way to be have shape to it would be, how big is this? What does it really do? What does done look like? What should this replace? So the person receiving the work doesn't have to design it in their head, because that thinking doesn't really show up in your calendar, but it does cost real energy. An example would be these vague requests that create extra work. When a manager says, put something together on customer feedback. Well, the person stops, thinks about it and wonders, is this one slide or 10? Is this for leaders or the team? Is this quick insight or deep analysis? Will this be shared outside the group so they play it safe and they do more, and then later on, they hear this is more than we needed, same effort, different setup, and once people start guessing, work rarely stays stable. Another problem is when no one knows who decides. So if work doesn't start with a clear shape, it usually doesn't end cleanly either. So work moves, but it never settles. One person adds feedback, another changes direction, a new requirement appears late. No one says when feedback is done, so the brain stays alert, waiting for the next change. Example would be the project that never quit, and that is a team works on a proposal each review adds just one more thing. Can we also include this? What if we tweak that? No one is being difficult. But no one says, Is this enough? So the work stretches. Energy drops. People rush at the end. So when work never settles, everything starts to feel urgent. Another problem is everything feels urgent all the time. Urgency spreads when nothing is clearly protected. If nothing is protected, everything competes, interruptions, all day, constant task switching, very few clean finishes. The brain never gets closure. A good example of this is you plan to work on one important task, then a quick question pops up. A meeting gets added. Someone needs just five minutes each interruption feels small, but by the end of the day, the main task isn't done. You feel busy but unsatisfied. You stay late to catch up. So when days end without clean finishes, people don't disengage. They protect themselves. Another problem is the quiet habits people use to stay safe. These type of behaviors aren't flaws, they're learned responses, and these ways and techniques are people over explain. They may copy extra people. They document everything. They stick exactly to what's asked. These habits help people survive unclear work, but they also slow everything down, and they don't close the loop. And the last problem is when work follows you home, not the panic work, but that background noise. When you replay conversations, you think about what might change. You plan tomorrow before today's over. Your body's home, your mind is still holding open loops. But the good news here is this isn't permanent, and it doesn't require fixing people. What does actually make work easier? Well, everything we've talked about so far explains why work gets heavy. Now let's talk about what actually lightens it. And this isn't about being tougher or more motivated. It's about changing a few moments where work usually breaks down so the brain can. Stop doing extra work it was never meant to do. The first thing we can do is give work a shape before you pass it on. Most stress at work doesn't come from the work itself. It comes from deciding what the work is supposed to be. When that decision gets pushed to the person receiving the task, they carry all the risk. The fix isn't more detail. It's fewer unknowns. So before work moves, it needs four anchors. What is this for? Who is it for? When does it really do and what does done look like? That's it. That's enough. An unshaped work sounds like, Can you review this shaped work sounds like, Can you review this for clarity before we send it to the client tomorrow, just flag major issues, no rewrites, same task, very different mental load. So when work has shape, people stop over building. But clarity at the start isn't enough if the ending keeps moving, and that means to decide who decides and when the brain dislikes these open endings. If work can be reopened at any time, the brain keeps it active, just in case. That's why decision clarity matters. People need to know who decides when feedback ends and what happens next. For example, a leader says, We'll gather feedback by Tuesday. After that we're moving forward. That sentence doesn't rush the work. It gives people permission to finish, and once work can finish, focus has room to return. The third thing to do is protect focus like it matters, because it does. And focus isn't a personality trait, it's an environment. So when focus isn't protected, people don't fail. They fragment. Every interruption forces the brain to reload context that reloading is tiring, even if the interruption is brief. For example, teams that work well don't rely on willpower. They agree on simple rules, some hours are meeting free. Urgent actually means urgent. Not every message needs an immediate response. When interruptions stop competing with everything else, work finishes faster. But even focus. Work stays heavy if it never fully ends, and that brings us to close the loop so the brain can rest. The brain tracks unfinished work automatically. That's not stress, it's how memory works. So closure isn't optional. Closing loops means naming when something is done, naming when it's paused, and being clear about what happens next or doesn't. So instead of Let's keep an eye on this. Try. We're done for now. We'll revisit this in q3 that clarity quiets the brain. Finished work leaves unfinished. Work lingers. So using these things change over time. So when work runs this way consistently, people change without being asked to. They explain less they ask better questions. They take things less personally. They recover faster after work, not because they're better people, but because work finally makes sense. In closing, you don't need to fix yourself. If work has been exhausting or hard to turn off. That doesn't mean you're failing. It may mean you're working inside patterns that create extra effort, patterns you didn't design but learn to adapt to. So this week, don't try to fix everything. Just notice one place where work feels heavier than it should. Ask, is the work unclear? Is the decision still open? Is a low loop unfinished, because awareness is where change starts. You don't need more discipline. You don't need to work harder. You need clearer moments so your effort can finally land, and when work moves with more clarity. Most people do just fine. Do you you.
