One thing I know about myself – I’m easily distracted. Each day I get up and despite having the desire to act strategically, the allure of tactical challenges finds me in my bathrobe “just checking my email” or “just adding one more idea to the collection of rough sketches for a client” or “just finishing reading that article I started yesterday.” God forbid I remember that I haven’t checked my networking sites in a week or so, or the supreme pinnacle of distraction – stumbling (more on that another time). Of course all these activities involve an interface featuring links or buttons to take you somewhere else, which can be justified in a certain context.
I might even have perfectly legitimate, honest-to-god work to do, that I promised by that morning. If I don’t do it, it won’t get done, at least not when I’d promised…
But what about the bigger picture, replete with questions such as, “Why am I in business,” “Where do I want to be in a year…5 years,” “When will I make more of an effort to find the kind of work that I want versus the kind I’ve been accepting (don’t worry Mr. Current Client, I still love you),” Etc., etc..
If you’re anything like me and you wish you addressed the bigger issues more regularly, Here’s a good read, from a member of my Biznik community. He quotes Stephen Covey and his “big rocks first” approach, but I was motivated by the whole posting.
I’m forever trawling for blogs and podcasts that’ll help me with my procrastination and scatterbrain demons; this gave me something to bite into.
Comment posted by shiny object
at 1/24/2008 2:13:00 AM
hey look over here…
very small rocks.
Well the people who write these books about “getting it done” are getting their work done. I wonder if they use their methods to do the work of writing about their methods. How do they come up with their great ideas? How do they know what to write about? What drives them to write? Are they divorced, drugged or just plain desperate?
Reading these books is just one more way of feeling accomplishment in lieu of actually doing your work.
How ironic that Alainis Morrisette didn’t get irony.
“very small rocks.” (the witch trial…Monty Python and the Holy Grail…)