As a manager, one needs to have a heightened level of awareness about your own, or an employee's procrastination, because typically procrastination is a trailing indicator of some larger symptomatic problem.
I remember visiting my doctor a few years back because I was experiencing these terrible shooting pain headaches, and of course I self diagnosed it as a tumor. You see, what the mind doesn't know it will create, and more often than not it creates worse case scenarios. So I created tumors.
Rather doing any exams, my doctor asked what I did at work. I told him, I run a public relations agency, blah, blah, blah. He said, "I know your profession, I want to know what you actually did today at work."
Well I had gotten into work, reviewed email (over a 1,000 in my in-box), checked voice mails (ignoring the 20 plus saved messages), talked with an employee, checked my fantasy football scores, talked to my sister and scheduled a lunch meeting. In between of all that important busy work I had managed to make three additional trips to the coffee machine.
So my doctor asks, "Sounds like you got nothing done today so far, do you have any deadlines to meet or projects your are trying to complete?" The answer to that question is YES. I had countless things to do, but I wasn't doing them. I was getting buried and not helping myself out of it.
The fact was I became overwhelmed and my system broke down. Fact also was, I was so far behind I did not even know what I was not getting to. Fact is was STRESSED OUT and the four cups of coffee were not helping out.
To start any project meant I had to spend time going through and listening to my voice mails to get that one number that someone left me about the contact I need to speak with to get pricing for the plan I needed to develop. Even the simplest of tasks became monumental.
My procrastination stemmed from a complete breakdown in my ability to capture, process and organize my life.
As Paul's essay points out, there are many reasons for procrastination. I urge us all to ask why we are procrastinating on a project or even a to-do item. Is it because we don't like the work, we don't feel we have the knowledge or adequate training, it's too big to take on? Be honest with yourself and then start working to change it.
Next post I'll talk about how I got organized and efficient and on this very day have no emails in my in-box and no saved voice mails - I still have a lot of things on my action list though.
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Tracked on: January 6, 2006 9:37 PM | Permalink to Trackback