Procrastination, there's no time for it this year
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Posted Thu 29 January 2009 @ 8:44 p.m. by Megan Lacy
What better way to start the year with the topic of procrastination? It may have something to do with the fact that I should have written a blog last week; however, procrastination and I were just settling into the New Year and we weren’t going to rush things.
It has been incredibility hard to get back into work mode and I know that I am not along as I have spoken to many people with the same story. We all had this mad rush to finish all our work, we supposedly emptied the ‘In tray’ before we walked out the door Xmas Eve with a spring in our steps.
My first handy hint of the year is; there is always something in the ‘In’ box, an empty ‘In box’ is a myth and we should accept this harsh reality. The opposite of this is to leave things in the tray for the magical work fairy to do; this is called procrastination.
However, my heart lifted as I googled ‘procrastination’ and found a great article which talks about ‘creative procrastination’ and that it’s healthy to do. For all these year I thought my procrastination was all bad, but I now have no doubt that at least 80% of my bad procrastination was actually ‘creative’. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I did find out that I am a typical procrastinator, do the low value things first and when I finally knuckle down and do the task, it actually feels Ok and I wonder why I made it into such a long winded event. But I’m not the type that leaves things to the last minute, that just creates stress, my procrastination in a contact centre is linked in nicely with an open plan environment, where interruptions are common and at times, pleasant relief. I’m sure many of you can relate to this.
To state the obvious; there is no place for procrastination in 2009, at any level in our profession, not doing tasks, not replying to customers, not reviewing processes, not acting on anything in a timely manner, uncreative procrastination cannot sneak into our working day.
To help, I have added the procrastination article into our Resource Library along with another article on interruptions, both are great to read and I hope will get us in the zone for our working year.
I hope everyone has a procrastination free start to 2009.
Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle