How To Get Your Boss To Give You Less Work

2. Seek time-management advice Before you request less work, you might want to see if there are more efficient ways to tackle your current workload, says Liane Davey, author of You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done. Let your boss know how long a task can take and see if they have advice on how to save time in the process (for example, you could ask, “It is taking me about five hours a month to prepare this report for the finance department. Is this in line with what you would expect? Do you have any suggestions on how to streamline the process?”).