Just hit my 9th month on the desk and the 80-hour weeks are starting to grind. Watched three analysts leave for ‘lifestyle exits’ last quarter. The Seasoned Mentor says there’s better ways than just pounding Red Bulls and suffering through it. What community-vetted tools or systems actually WORK for triaging fire drills without getting steamrolled? Bonus points for tactics that don’t require MD buy-in.
lol @ ‘community-vetted tools’ - reality check: if your MD wants the deck reshuffled at 2am, your pretty asana board means jack. survived by doing two things: 1) coffee IV drip 2) strategically ‘forgetting’ non-client facing tasks til someone screams. works better than any gantt chart.
my senior told me to use 15-min time blocks for email triage??? idk seems impossible when vps keep slacking every 5 mins. tried color-coding tasks but got mocked in team chat… any real hacks?
Three actionable steps: 1) Create a ‘critical path’ list each morning with your VP - forces prioritization alignment 2) Batch non-urgent compliance training during post-dinner energy dip hours 3) Institute a 10pm ‘triage cutoff’ where junior team members escalate remaining tasks. This reduced my team’s late nights by 30%.
You’ve got this! One analyst I know uses 5-minute stairwell meditation breaks between models – says it resets focus. Small wins add up!
At GS we used to have a secret shared tracker for ‘BS tasks’ – whenever MDs added makework, we’d code it yellow. Once 50%+ of the deck went yellow, someone ‘accidentally’ left it open during a check-in. Magically got reprioritized next day. YMMV but worth a shot!