Procrastination. We all battle it in varying degrees, at varying times. Both personally and professionally there are times when it just seems logical to put something off or avoid all together. Procrastination, in its latin origins, arises from - pro "in favor of moving forward" and crastinus "of tomorrow".
In teaching the Time Management module this week in Harvard ManagerMentor my mind kept coming back to the notion of procrastination, or what our psychologist friends would call task avoidance. I've been thinking about the levels of procrastination from the individual, the team, and the organization.
I left yesterday's class thinking about Time Management in notions of self-care:
1. How do I better respect my own time?
2. How do I better respect others' time?
3. How do I help others better respect my time?
The Law of Forced Efficiency - borrowing the Pareto Principle, what are the tasks, activities, and deliverables that draw 20% of my energy and focus but deliver 80% of my impact? Alternatively, what might be the 80% of tasks which get in my way and only deliver 20% of business impact?
This got me thinking of a comment Amy Kates made in talking about organizational design. Which went something like - How do we design work where people can deliver 5 high value adding contributions of 20% each, as opposed to job design and work processes where people contribute on 20 differing tasks only offering 5% of impact to organizations?
Well, I now need to get ready for the Leading and Motivating module.
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