Too many projects, too many tasks, too many deliverables. At every meeting, work is piled onto our full plates with the implication that none will fall to the floor, like an all-you-can buffet but with expandable plates.
Of course, our plates are not expandable. Resources and deadlines are effectively fixed. We may be able to shuffle resources between projects, but the number of resources is a constraint. And the shuffling comes with no schedule extension, so time is also a constraint. (So is the amount of work a single person can do.) No question, these constraints are real, and we all know it. After a while, the all-you-can-eat approach gets to us. We come to loathe the requests for more work (and sometimes the requestors) because our constraints aren’t respected. We get angry and put ourselves in a “no” mindset, where requests are guilty until proven innocent. We use our constraints to justify our negativity.