Goals are dreams with deadlines. It’s a clever saying I wish I’d thought up. I didn’t, I borrowed it, but I love the quote because (like all things worth remembering) it says so much so simply.
In business some workers make lists but many do not. Some prioritize but others do not. But even those with a prioritized list don’t act upon them — they do not execute — which begs the question why. Why the heck is tomorrow always the busiest day of the year? Why is it then that everyone plans to get stuff done?
Several reasons:
- He or she is not in active pursuit of clearly-defined written goals.
- He or she is easily distracted.
- He or she neither lives, nor works with a sense of urgency.
- Procrastination is tolerated by his or her boss or organization.
Clearly-defined written goals. Most people spend far more time planning their vacation than their career. Don’t be one of them. Careers are built on cumulative achievement. The more you achieve, as quickly as possible, the faster your career ascent.
Avoiding distractions. In the old days this was known as “the water cooler effect.” Instead of working, people wasted time shooting the breeze around the water cooler. In time, the water cooler was obsoleted; Starbucks took its place. Starbucks has now somewhat been supplanted by technology trinkets large and small.
Digital addiction problems are way up and rising; it’s a growth industry. Because of that, attention spans are down. Way down.
A couple years ago I worked with a talented fellow in Birmingham, England whose talent set teased a very big upside. His problem: He was so addicted to his PDA that he could not concentrate for ten minutes. It was sad to see such a superb talent undermine his very rare skill set because of his refusal to own the severity of how technology (and dopamine) had seized total control of his behaviors.
No sense of urgency. I like to tell my people, “You can leave footprints or buttprints in the sands of time. The choice is yours.” We are all here on this planet for only a speck. Maximize every moment. Live and work with passion and urgency.
Procrastination. People put things off because they can. The biggest downside of the soccer mom sabotage of the nation’s old meritocracy — we now give trophies for participation rather than for winning — is that we have a workforce generation raised in an entitlement, rather than competitive, environment.
Because of that, punishment for non-performance is too lax, too often. If people do not bring a sense of urgency to the workplace, they’ll work accordingly. A manager’s job is to instill and enforce discipline execution, fairly and consistently, throughout the culture.
Workers get off the procrastination schnide two ways. One is by chasing a reward, the other to avoid a punishment. The problem with rewards is they must be tied to more than just what’s expected. If they aren’t, if something that starts out special becomes common, workers treat it as an entitlement and it loses its effectiveness.
In every high performance work place, people who gain enjoyment from accomplishment achieve more collectively than competitors where people do not. This is interesting to me, because what this deals with is the collective inspiration of individual attributes. Great leaders inspire those switches to turn on. It is why great leaders are so much in demand, yet also so difficult to find.
Achievement enjoyment is inspired by several things, starting with someone’s upbringing. But once in the workplace, among the most common motivators are tangible and intangible rewards. Recognition, for example, can be both. Recognition is always welcome in the workplace, even by those who pretend it isn’t.
If you only improve on one thing at work or in your real life this year, do yourself a favor: Move the busiest day of the year from tomorrow ’til today. You’ll be glad you did.