Procrastination is the thief of time

“Procrastination is the thief of time” this quote from Edward Young’s poem is as valid in today’s fast moving business environment as it was when written over 250 years ago.

Is procrastination your downfall? How much of your work is delivered ahead of schedule or “just in time”? By comparison, how much is delivered embarrassingly late, consequently using up valuable time rescheduling and apologising?

How do you plan your day and workload? Do you begin with the quick, easy tasks and those you most enjoy undertaking? When do you do those urgent and important tasks that may be less interesting or more challenging?

How many unimportant tasks do you do to avoid those that you really should be working on? Consequently, from having most of your day to complete these key tasks you now have limited time putting yourself under unnecessary pressure.

What impact will that have on the quality of the output? Will you now deliver right on the deadline or perhaps slightly late or worst case very late, creating anxiety for your clients?

How many jobs are “almost” complete awaiting those final touches? Aren’t they creating duplicate effort and needlessly consuming time? Time that should be spent on profitable work.

If all this is so obvious and common sense, why are so many book shelves filled with time and task management self help manuals?

Of course none of this refers to you – or does it?!!