How good are you at procrastinating?

Being a personal productivity nut means that one of my favourite things is to have my head in a book about it. Now I know what you’re thinking, that it sounds like I’m avoiding being productive by reading about stuff rather than actually doing the work. Occasionally that does happen, but usually there is a purpose to picking up the book. When there’s something I cant quite get my head around, and need a bit of guru guidance.

Those nice distractions

After delivering one of my “Become an Inbox Zero Superhero” workshops one attendee didn’t make it down to zero by the end of the session. He still had another 5,000 to clear out. Okay, he did have 34,000 unread ones to start with so he was slightly up against it. After the session he went back to his desk for lunch and sent me a photo of him proudly showing his David Allen “Getting Things Done” book (highly recommended folks!) He had bought it a long time ago but ironically had been too busy to sit down and read it.

Do you need nudge?

I subtly sent him a gentle reminder that there was still some work to be done on clearing his emails and to have a think if opening the book could wait just a little longer. At the end of the day I received another photo. It was of a screenshot, proudly showing that there were no more emails left in his inbox (I find people like to do this to show off their great achievement, and it gives me great satisfaction too, knowing that I have assisted them in making a difference.)

He told me later that the little nudge had made him think and to then make a definite decision that he was going clear those remaining emails. But should we be giving ourselves those initial nudges rather than someone else?

We’ll I’m going to procrastinate on that a little and maybe discuss it in the next post…..;)