A ringing phone creates a heightened sense of urgency in many
of us, but that shouldn’t automatically give the caller a higher pri-
ority than the person sitting across the table.
If you decide to “do it later,” note when you’ll do it and what,
specifically, you’re going to do. If you don’t, your attempts at orga-
nizing may degenerate into evasion instead.
pee Ling OFF The LaYer S OF per FeCT iOn: The “gOOD
enOUgh” TeneT OF Time managemenT
You’ve decided to do it now. Now, how well will you do it? If it has
to be perfect before you’ll let it go, you’ve got a big time manage-
ment problem.
I’m not advocating shoddy work or irresponsible performance.
But I suspect that isn’t really an issue here. Sloppy, irresponsible
people don’t read time management books. Conscientious people
do. But the line between conscientious and perfectionist can be hard
to find, and perfectionists have a tough time finishing anything.
The computer can make the problem worse. Because we can
edit so easily, because we can always surf for more information,
because we can run one more set of data at the push of a button,
we may raise our quality expectations until we reach such lofty
(and utterly ridiculous) pinnacles of perfectionism as “zero toler-
ance for error.” (We might as well ban that horrible time waster,
the bathroom break.)
How good is good enough? Who’s going to see it? What are
they going to do with it?
The meeting minutes that will be filed and forgotten need to be
factually accurate and written in clear English; they don’t need to
be rendered in rhyming couplets.
The agenda for an informal meeting of department heads calls
for a lower level of sophistication and polish than does the final
draft of the annual report for the stockholders.
J U S T D O N’ T D O I T!