By Jeff Davidson

It's a given these days that career professionals manage many issues all at the same time. Here is a look, in Q&A format, on why this is happening.

Q: Why do things seem to be getting more complex in our immediate environments?

A: I'll answer this question by posing some questions: Why does it seem that there’s more on your plate, more to handle? Is it because you’re getting older or your job responsibilities have increased?

Certainly, those things are important. A number of factors are converging, however, which creates a situation in which your job becomes more challenging than it would have been just 10 or 15 years ago, not to mention several decades ago.

In previous eras, when information moved at a snail’s pace, you could do the same job for your entire life and be well rewarded for it. Your grandfather or grandmother probably learned professions that comfortably served them for their entire lives. Obviously, this is no longer the case.

In addition, increasing technological intrusion in our society all but ensures that you will have more tugging on you. Culturally, we develop hundreds of major technological breakthroughs every single day. As a consequence of being in such an environment, each of us ends up having to face greater complexity.

Q: I knew that we were advancing rapidly in technology, but why at such a pace?

A: Increasingly, there is a blurring of entertainment and information, something that can be confirmed by simply turning on the television or cruising the web. Often, you find that news and information are mixed. Delivering a message today certainly means conveying information, but an added goal is to make it entertaining and to keep the viewer interested.

Perhaps most onerous, as we proceed into the future and society gets more complex, more stringent documentation is often required of us by the government and others who have the ability to demand it of us.

Hiring or firing someone, expanding operations, merging responsibilities, or outsourcing assignments—almost any function you can name requires more documentation, which contributes to each of us having to handle an increasing amount of work. Do you know anyone who has vast, uninterrupted stretches of time that are unaccounted for, during which they can tackle any one priority they want?

Q: There is constantly more work to do. Why?

A: As you become more adept at your job and are given more technology tools to assist you, you are asked to do more. When you only had a typewriter, with which you could generate three or four pieces of correspondence at a given time, that’s how much you were asked to do. In the age of computers, which allows a multitude of correspondence to be generated with a few keystrokes, people ask you to do more.

So the mere fact that you can do more tends to lead to people asking you to do more. These demands come from employers, fellow employees, family members—everywhere you turn.

Q: How can we better manage this flood of demands?

A: Take charge of your environment by assessing what you face, cataloging the resources available to you, and plotting your path. For example, consider your personal life.

Suppose that your health is a critical priority. An objective related to being healthy is to live a long, healthy life. A goal—perhaps one of many—could be to join a health club and work out three times a week, or to buy an exercise bike that you'll use whenever you watch TV.

One's productive work life is limited. While you might work and live much longer than you expect to, your productive work life is finite. Change is guaranteed. To better manage all the professional demands on your plate, it's necessary to take stock of the challenges you face and determine the best way forward.

Jeff Davidson, MBA, CMC, is principal, Breathing Space® Institute, Raleigh, North Carolina (www.BreathingSpace.com or Jeff@Breathingspace.com). An author and presenter on work-life balance, he holds the world’s only registered trademark from the United States Patent and Trademark Office as “The Work-Life Balance Expert.”®