Oversubscribed: Having insufficient capacity to meet the demand of those who are interested

You wake up in the morning, fix your coffee and head to work. First glance at the calendar and you see your day is full, having no wiggle room for adjustments. Glancing down at your keyboard you begin to type, letter by letter, pushing for productive keystrokes to make a difference. The air is thick with dust from all of the co-workers typing on their filthy keyboards. Pushing to achieve the unachievable with no end in sight. “Clip clop” in the distance, growing louder and louder as if it’s coming your direction until it stops directly in front of your cube. There ahead of you stands Gabe with his helpless smile and frustrated brow. He murmurs four words,  “Will you help me?”

We have all been in this situation and we have all made a choice to either help or turn away our friends and co-workers. In my younger years I was afraid to say no and was compelled to always be the helping hand, even when I knew it would prevent me from completing things that I needed to get done for myself. As I have grown older I’ve come to realize that being nice is not always the answer to solving all problems. I am not saying that you should live your life for you and for only you.There is a safe balance to achieving your goals along with helping others achieve theirs. With practice you will actually find that others share the same goals as you and by combining resources you can achieve more at a quicker pace than if you attempted to tackle everything yourself.

Far too many people, including myself, take on entirely too many task at one time. In both business and life everybody feels that their task is the most important. When asking a co-worker to work on something for you the feeling that your your task should be their main priority is natural because it involves your bottom line. What would you do if that co-worker stated they cannot take on your task because they would not be able to achieve the quality results you are looking for?

The world makes us feel like we have to always be working on something, pushing the limits and putting out sub-par products just to meet the deadlines. What if you took a step back and and focused on the quality and forgot about the quantity? We have built a society of the oversubscribed. Imagine what innovations we could create with focus and the ability to say no.