Do you procrastinate? “NO!” Are you kidding me? I think most people procrastinate on professional or personal tasks at one time or another. If you can do it and get away with it, who’s harmed? What’s the problem? Why does it have such an evil reputation?
It is so easy to slip into procrastination behavior because it’s the default to doing something— to do nothing until later. Failure to do your work in a timely manner can have serious consequences. If you delay acting on your tasks occasionally or get a little lazy sometimes, but can catch up and turn on all cylinders when it’s necessary, you probably don’t have a problem.
However, if those delays occur regularly and you’re always behind, there is cause for concern. Do any of these behaviors characterize you?
• falling short in your administrative responsibilities
• not prepared adequately as committee chair
• not prepared adequately for class on several occasions
• not finishing writing projects
• not responding to communication (e-mails, TMs, or phone calls) in a timely fashion
• not finishing your writing piece on time for a grant
Not doing your work in a timely manner is a time waster. What are you doing in place of what you should be doing? Perhaps trying to figure out the grammatical structure of that yellow sentence.
If you are an admitted, self-confessed procrastinator, you might need help. It is unlikely you will survive the demands of academia or any other work environment. If you are not a procrastinator, but have a colleague, student, friend, or family member who is, check out my next blog. You might be able to provide this person with some help.
My next blog will address some of the typical causes of procrastination and proffer several suggestions and guidelines to overcome it. Let me know your thoughts.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC & Coventry Press
No comments:
Post a Comment