I ride a motorbike to and from work which relaxes me nicely on the way home to my family.

Whilst at work though, it became regular practice for me to be given a project and asked for a completion date, only for it to be completely ignored and a much shorter deadline given. I'd then take the stress and try anything to get it done, fail quite a lot of the time and get a bad review as a result.

Now I document what is involved and their individual timescales (x2 to allow for problems) and if they want to shorten the deadline I tell them that some work needs to be removed, because those individual deadlines are not adjustable.

Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't take the micky with the timescales I set, I generally end up finishing a little bit before the deadline. At the same time, I'm no longer taking on the stress because someone's promised someone else that a piece of work will be done in a week.

🙂