All posts tagged Procrastination

Procrastination Demystified Finally…I think…

by jaywalk1 on December 8, 2008 in Gen Y, PR, Resource, Thoughts with 3 Comments

 

Procrastination

Demotivators: Procrastination

 

 

The Telegraph out of the UK posted a story today titled “Academics invent a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate.” In it, writer Urmee Khan  reports on Prof Piers Steel, a Canadian academic who has spent over a decade looking into why people put off until tomorrow what they could do today. Acoording to Khan, Prof Steel believes that the notion that procrastinators are either perfectionists or just lazy is wrong. Steel may be on to something, but I don’t know if that something can be applied to PR people. 

Steel breaks it down like this: ”The equation is U=EV/ID.

The ‘U’ stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.

Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are “self-structured”, with people setting their own schedules.

This means that people tend to postpone things with delayed rewards in favour of activities that offer immediate rewards.”

First, as a Gen-Y guy, I don’t think you’ll ever hear me say that having “self-structured” jobs where people can set their own schedules is a problem, but I do agree with the idea that people postpone things with delayed rewards in favor of immediate rewards. 

I wonder how procrastination truly is viewed by others though. Is it anything that I could do right now but put off until later? Some would argue that the decision to do one thing instead of another is planning and making the best use of your time.

Any thoughts? Feel free to weigh in.

 

Another Procrastination post: True Life: I am a Chronic Procrastinator

Banning Social Sites at Work: NO AIR!

by jaywalk1 on July 13, 2008 in Gen Y, Social Media, Social Networking, Work with 4 Comments

The debate about banning or blocking social sites has been going on for some time. Listening to the conversation, it seems like the most heated debates surround the topic of banning facebook, with some making the argument that it hampers productivity and others claiming that it can help the employee get work done.

I have blogged about my productivity before. Truth be told, finding a balance or system for getting work done while being engaged in social sites wasn’t easy, but I did. It is my responsibility to get the work done, and at times, social sites like Twitter have helped tremendously. I am a firm believer in the idea that all that matters is that the work gets done on time and done well. Outside of that, what else matters?

Initially, I felt the urge to join the conversation Matt Elliott started, but I wanted to come up with something different from the majority of the comments already posted at Brazen Careerist. I wanted to find a way to articulate to employers what social media means to most people in my generation, and it hit me last week on the metro as I was reading Geoff Livingston’s white paper The Socialprise.

Geoff’s paper includes some nice insights, and I definitely encourage you to check it out. The thing that led to my great metro moment was actually a quote he provided from Charlene Li. Promoting Groundswell, the book she co-authored with Josh Bernoff, Li said:

“Social Networks will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be. And also, without that social context in our connected lives, we won’t really feel like we are truly living and alive, just as without sufficient air, we won’t really be able to breathe deeply.”

EXACTLY! That is it right there! It’s like air! If you take social sites away, it would be like trying to breath with no air! If you’ve been following PR Prescriptions at all, you know I like to make musical references. Here’s one for today’s post:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icv6DgZ-9O4]

Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown – “No Air”


But how do you expect me to work all day and NOT Tweet?!

My world revolves around it, it’s so hard for me to breathe.

Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no air? No Air… No Air…

True Life: I am a Chronic Procrastinator

by jaywalk1 on June 20, 2008 in Gen Y, Public Relations, Work with 7 Comments

I’m not sure if MTV’s ever done a True Life episode on procrastination, but if they did, I would have been the perfect candidate about a year ago.

In high school, I was a model student, but the minute I set foot on the streets of Foggy Bottom, I got the itch, the procrastination itch. If you’re like me, you know this itch well. You feel it every time you have to take something to the post office, have to do laundry or something as simple as emptying the dishwasher.

In college, I made it my unofficial mission to master the art of procrastination, and my biggest triumph came during my sophomore year at GW. I was taking English 10, the GCR that changed my life (really, it did… because of it I love reading biographies), and I was working on my final paper. It was an unholy 15pgs double-spaced and I did everything under the sun but sit down and right that paper. It was the night before the paper was due and I was on page one. No problem, right?

BIG PROBLEM.

Black Eyed Peas came to campus that night… I think we can guess what I did. I went to the concert, had an amazing time, got back to my room around 1am, pumped out 15pgs of one of the best papers I ever wrote, collapsed at 630am, jumped up with just enough time to sprint through the streets of Foggy Bottom, drop off the paper and go back to sleep.

There were many more stories like this, but all (well…most) of my procrastinating days ended when I entered the world of PR full time. People say Content is King. If content is King, then deadlines are Aces. Damned is the PR pro who misses deadlines. For this reason, I’ve learned to control my procrastination…by scheduling time for it.

Sitting at a desk for 8 to 9 to 10 hrs a day can make the day hard to get through, and with all the distractions of the internet (right now twitter is my main addiction), it’s hard to stay focused. In order to pump out the press releases, pitch, monitor blogs, edit podcasts and stay sane, I declare HPHs or High Productivity Hours. For example, if I need to get a report out by 4, I’ll declare 2 to 4 high productivity hours. That means no gchat, limited email responses, and only 2 or 3 glances at twitter (This is case by case though…there may be some good tweets…). When its not a high productivity hour, I am open to anything. So far, this system works for me. If you’ve got a system that works for you, let me know.