The Managerial Promotion Underbelly: Side Order of Chaos

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Question:

When leadership promoted me to team manager, the position came with a new title but not much of a raise. Still, I felt rewarded for my hard work and celebrated. I figured the extra effort would pay off, especially with the promise of a year-end bonus.

Three weeks in, I understand why the two prior team managers quit. In addition to the client work I’m still expected to do, leadership has stacked an entire second job on top of my first.

I can’t find a rhythm. The “quick” approvals, tiny check-ins, platform alerts and dashboards pull me in twenty directions before 10 a.m.

The managers above me keep telling me this new role will “pay off,” but I’m drowning in micro-requests I never had to deal with before. Between managing employees, managing platforms, and still trying to hit billable targets, my days run ten hours or more. I leave work drained and unsure what I even finished.

I don’t want to lose the new title and the chance at a bonus. So, if I don’t want to burn out, what do I need to do to manage all this?

Answer:

Individually, managerial tasks look harmless: Approve this. Respond to that. Re-authenticate here. Watch this 43-second training video your system auto-scheduled for 8:03 a.m. But stack fifty of these micro-demands together and your day turns into chopped-up chaos—tiny cuts of attention that bleed your focus dry.

By 5 p.m., you can’t shake the question: What did I even do today?

Here’s the unglamorous truth about management that almost nobody tells newly minted managers. Promotions come with invisible work that doesn’t slip quietly into your day, it hangs over you like a bucket of ping-pong balls. Each time one drops and you chase it down, three more dive-bomb your to-do list.

When your day becomes one long loop of: start task → ping → approval → dashboard alert → “quick question” → begin again → “are you free for a sec” → update request → authentication timeout → begin again……you feel wiped out. No one thrives in a job that forces a full focus reboot every few minutes.

Leaders love to assure you that new processes, platforms and dashboards will “make everything easier.” That’s Workplace Fantasy #7, right alongside, “This meeting will end on time.”

Here’s a secret most executives forget. New systems rarely remove old work. They stack on top of it. The learning curve eats time. The bugs eat time. The duplicate-entry phase eats time. The conflicting instructions from senior managers eat even more time. And while you’re navigating all that, you’re also supposed to lead a team and hit your deliverables.

So, how do you get everything done?

Let’s talk strategy.

Block as much time as you can on your calendar with names your leadership respects—like client prep and client work/billable. Leaders hate to interrupt what makes money. Let that hesitation work in your favor.

Turn off your notifications. Email pings? Off. Chat banners? Off. Dashboard nudges? Muted. Check all of these on your timeline, not theirs. Incoming “quick questions”?—schedule them for after 3. If it’s truly urgent, they’ll say so.

Batch the nonsense. Interruptions feel unbearable because they arrive one at a time, each demanding instant attention. Corral them. Pick one or two windows a day to approve, acknowledge, respond, update, and handle the little things that gnaw through your mental bandwidth. Think of it like cleaning the sink all at once instead of one fork at a time.

Renegotiate expectations: Leaders respond to data. How many hours these new tasks require; how much of that time is non-billable, and what slips or slows because of them.

Then, ask the right question: Given these responsibilities take X hours a week, whatpriorities do you want me to adjust?

Finally, create shortcuts like your career depends on it. Because it does. You want to create templates, checklists, macros, canned responses, one-click approvals and “Do not disturb except for fire or snacks” rules to buy back the time you desperately need.

Here’s the bottom line: you can’t let your focus get hijacked and expect to feel successful. Reclaiming control isn’t about hustling harder—it’s about refusing to let every ping dictate your day. You need strategies that pull you out of crisis response. Once you do that, you’ll remember what it feels like to finish something.

© 2025 Lynne Curry, PhD, SPHR, SHRM-SCP