“Frankly Eve, I’m worried about your bandwidth.”

This statement came from my editor at MSNBC.com recently. He told me this after I asked him to give me two or three additional assignments each month. With gas and prices for just about everything else so high, I’ve been feeling pressure to make some extra money lately.

When he made his “bandwidth” statement I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. I said, “What do you mean?”

He went on to tell me he was worried that maybe I was taking on too much work and didn’t know if I could handle more. With a weekly column and small business blog at MSNBC.com, and all the other freelance work he knows that I do for BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine and New York Times, plus working on a proposal for my next book, he was reluctant to give me more.

I insisted and he eventually relented.

When I got off the phone I thought: “Great. More work.”

But a day or two later I was working on a freelance assignment, and I couldn’t remember where I put a critical report I had printed out just hours earlier. My desk has become a sea of clutter lately and I was pulling my hair out trying to find it. Then I realized I had forgotten to RSVP for a six-year-old pool birthday party that my son Cheiron was invited to. And, even though it was midday, I was yawning so much I had to have a second cup of coffee. (My limit is usually one.)

Just as I was making another cup of Joe I heard the words of my editor: “I’m worried about your bandwidth.” And suddenly that statement became crystal clear in my head.

I was indeed using up my bandwidth, a bandwidth I always thought was limitless.

There are some issues here. I decided to take on more work at a time when I’ve become rather unorganized. I have no real system for tracking my work and my desk looks like a bomb went off. There’s a bag of nuts on my desk from 2004.

Any way, I ‘m getting some help with my desk. I will be writing about this for a MSNBC.com column in two weeks.

As for surpassing my bandwidth reserve, I’m still not sure that’s really happened.

I decided to ask Cali Williams Yost, fellow blogger and founder of Work+Life Fit, and author of “Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You” what the working-to-much warning signs are. Here’s her list:

1. Consistently missing deadlines for priority work.
2. Noticing that you are making more mistakes than usual (we all make mistakes but the rate is higher).
3. You find you don’t have enough time to concentrate, and focus in order to do your job well.
4. You are feeling more tired at the end of the day.
5. This doesn’t seem to be a discrete period of extra work, it seems to have no end.

She also had some interesting insights on what exactly is too much work.

“I find many people still define it as whether or not they are able to get everything done on their ‘to do’ list,” she explains. “I’m not sure how realistic that definition is in a 24/7, high-tech, global work reality where emails keep coming in day and night and business is conducted across the global.”

A more “realistic gauge,” she adds, “is whether or not you are able to get the priority tasks and responsibilities done in a quality, non-frantic way. How you know you are taking on too much work is when too many things become a priority and the pace at which you need to work to complete those tasks is unmanageable, exhausting and jeopardizing the quality of the work.”

And I didn’t ask her for tips but thank goodness she offered them anyway:

* Sit down with you manager and team (or with yourself if you are an entrepreneur) and ask for help reprioritizing. I’ve found oftentimes managers and team members are unaware when a colleague’s plate becomes too full. Putting your head-down and just toughing it out no longer works today’s world. You need to say something.
* Rethink your planning and technology management system. Are you letting email and voicemail control you, or are you controlling it so you aren’t distracted and can focus? Are you taking the time either daily or weekly to think about what you need to a want to accomplish at work and in your personal life? Gone are the days when we can just let the day “happen.”

Boy, she’s not kidding.

Are you guys doing too much? Have you checked your bandwidth lately?