Listen:
There's a guy at the site I work at. He's an IT Coordinator on the GM side of things. I walked by his area the other day and the dude was practically pulling his hair out. Fraying at the edges. The resignation was thick in the air. So I sat down with him and helped him through the problem. I gave him a little piece of my time. While I was sitting there, he started talking about everything that he needed to get done. And how important all of it was. Every. Last. One.
When I worked at McDonald's, there were always things that needed to get done. Especially when you were getting ready to close the store. I had a list about three miles long of shit that needed to get done. And *all* of it had to get done. I consistently asked my bosses what the #1 Priority was. I never ever got a straight answer, but the doubletalk always boiled down to, "All of it."
The IT Coordinator was freaked because he had a To Do list that outstripped his time frame. I run into this problem at work all the time. And some days, I fall into the abyss. I get stressed out and pissed off. I feel resigned and hopeless and I want the same old answers. How can I finish all of these things if each and every one is my #1 priority? How? How? How?
So one of the things that McDonald's taught me was how to deal with the stress of the balancing act. How to lean each stressful thing against another so that they formed a tight pyramid. In pyramid form, the problems have less surface area, so they're less stressful.
Sometimes this works and other times it doesn't. I've been pretty successful lately at letting it all go. Some things are beyond me. And I've learned (mostly) to accept that.
Gracefully.
(I think.)