How to Overcome Laziness at the Workplace? – Part 3
By admin | May 2, 2008
7. Nothing Personal
On a typical work day, there is an equal chance for good events as well as bad events. We should never let the bad moments from the workplace to be carried along with us into our personal life, family life or into our subsequent workday.
All the events that happen at work, such as ‘we couldn’t meet a deadline’ or ‘someone is not cooperating’ or ‘the boss is not happy with us’ aren’t any great memories to be taken home or dwelled upon for a lifetime.
We should never carry such memories home with us and should never continue worrying even for another day as it will disrupt our mood, family environment, as well as the next few days at work. If we continuously imagine the workplace as a place where we’re not happy, it will create an image in our mind that may never let us like our workplace again.
If the boss is mad, we might instantly feel that he doesn’t like us anymore and this feeling might keep haunting us whenever we think about work. It may become even worse when we are at the workplace.
If our boss is not happy, we are not happy. Does it make any sense? We are not ourselves if we allow our moods to be controlled by external events that are happening around us. If someone is sad, do we have to do the same to the people around us?
It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurt us.
- by Steven R. Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Think of this: “If our boss doesn’t really like us, why does he still keep us employed?” Perhaps he screamed at us because, he had a bad time at home or with one of his clients or in traffic. Everything in the workplace happens for the business, not to disturb our mood.
If something happens in the workplace that’s driving us nuts, we should never take it personally. As long as we understand it’s for the business and shouldn’t take it personally, we don’t have to worry about it at all. By thinking this way, we can free up our mind from such negative thoughts about the workplace and instead fill it up with fun memories.
“If I see the workplace as a place where I enjoy, will I ever be lazy to work?”
8. Make more Friends
Everyone likes to spend time with their friends. This is also one of the major reasons for us to get excited about the weekends and holidays. How about having friends at the workplace? If there are none, why don’t we start making some friends?
The best way to make friends is to offer help when they need and to get help when we are in need.
I don’t mean to always gossip at the water fountain or in the corridor during work hours. Instead, we can spend time with friends in the lunch break or other times when we are free from work or when we want to take a small break on busy day.
Taking a brief break from the work and spending time with friends will also help boosting our productivity. Of course, don’t force anyone or disturb their work routine to have conversation or chat.
I suggest the book Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi that discusses how valuable is building relationships and how can we easily make friends.
If we have friends at the workplace, it’s always fun being there. If we have fun with our friends at the workplace, it motivates us to spend more time there. As we discussed in Part-1 of this series, if our brain finds fun being in someplace, it encourages us to be there as much as possible. If we have more friends at the workplace it will no more be seen as someplace were we go everyday and spend all our energy until burnout.
The feeling of being with the friends at the workplace helps us get out of the bed and cheerfully get ready for work every morning. We will be as enthusiastic as waiting for the Mondays as we do for the weekends.
If the workplace is a friendly place, there is no place for laziness.
9. Document Everything
When we come across a problem at the workplace, we generally spend most of time in researching the problem, rather than fixing it. It may take anywhere from a few hours to days to complete the research, depending upon its complexity. Once we figure out the right solution, it doesn’t take much of our time or effort to fix the problem. Once the problem is solved, we celebrate and move onto another problem.
After a few months later, we might encounter the same problem again. We will make an effort to recall how we solved it in the past but can’t because there is no record of the problem. So, once again we have to go through the same painful process of researching (re search = search again ?) which is a very stressful. At this moment, it strikes to us that it would have been much easier if the solution process was properly recorded the first time when we solved the same problem. We sincerely promise to our self that we will never repeat the same mistake ever again. But, once get over the situation, we tend to forget all the pain we went through and, once again, will fail to document.
Many of us would have gone through the same situation several times but we have never changed a bit. It’ because, we are living in a reactive world where we never act until something really happens.
This process can be made enjoyable by including one more step into the problem solving mechanism. The problem shouldn’t be called as “fixed” unless it’s properly documented. I would say, the celebrations should always follow the documentation of the whole solution process. Documentation works like a telephone directory that helps us quickly find solutions for most of the problems.
This helps us eliminate the stress out of worklife by reducing the time and effort spent in dealing with most of the problems.
When the work is easy no one gets lazy.
If you like my article, please Subscribe to this Feed.
Part-1: How to Overcome Laziness at the Workplace ? – Part 1
Part-2: How to Overcome Laziness at the Workplace? - Part 2
Topics: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
How to Overcome Laziness at the Workplace? - Part 2
By admin | April 13, 2008
4. Allocate Fun Money
“What do we work for?”
When I asked one of my friends this simple question, his answer was, “to fulfill our responsibilities so that we can get complete satisfaction out of our human life and go to heaven…blah…blah…blah.”
Stop it! I felt like screaming, “why don’t you hit my head with a hammer!”
We both know it was not the correct answer.
I guess the quick answer has got to be “to make money!”
“Money for what,” I asked.
“To spend, of course,” was his reply.
“Spend on what? And why?”
“To spend on our needs and wants,” he answered. “By doing so, we achieve happiness.”
The question now becomes, “do we really have control on what we are spending?” Let us see:
Most of our paycheck will go towards paying utility bills, credit cards, healthcare, mortgage, school fees and day-care expenses, most of which we cannot control. How many of us really feel happy when spending our money on things like these? How many of us smile while paying our bills?
So what should one do with the remainder of their paycheck? Savings? or Investments? We might be hopefully anticipating that one shiny day when our pay increases and we will have plenty of money to spend. Unfortunately, the pay increase will happen just as the expenses increase, and then we’ll never get to spend any money on ourselves.
The answer to the original question has got to be, “we work to make a living.”
Then, how can we expect ourselves to wake up in the early morning and be enthusiastic about going to work and making money which we cannot ever spend on ourselves? Our human minds will never commit to anything without expecting to get something out of it.
In order to get happiness, we have to set aside some money from every paycheck that we can spend for our own fun and enjoyment. Taking 5% of a paycheck as “fun money” may not really hurt as much as one might think. People are capable of adapting to their means, even with 5% less in the paycheck.
One can then do or buy something fun and enjoyable with that money. Take the family to dinner or the beach, or buy a book, some sports equipment or some electronic gadget.
This will encourage us to be more committed to the workplace as we are realizing the immediate benefits of our work.
It’s not the money that creates the fun; it’s the freedom of spending our own money.
Laziness tends to disappear as fun appears.
5. Don’t be a Pusher
If you play any sport, you would have already guessed what I am going to talk about. The pushers are the type of players who don’t like to see the ball in their side of the court. They don’t hit the ball hard, don’t spin or not even play any tricks.
“So, what do they do?”
They just push the ball again and again to the other side of the court until their opponent gives up.
Pushers are very common in most workplaces.
When the pushers are given any work, the first thing that comes to their mind is how to avoid or postpone it. They immediately try to push it to other people or other department(s) by finding a fault or by raising a question in the given work.
The other department or person will generally take a few hours, if not days to reply based on his interest and convenience. If the other party is also a pusher, they will do the same thing as the first pusher, pushing it into other court with another question.
After receiving the reply, the pusher will never look back into the problem for quite a few days. They again simply hit into other court with another question then, sit back and relax. This kind of pushing back and forth will continue for quite some time without any progress.
It looks like everyone is waiting for others interaction. It may appear to be lot of activity, but actually the work got stalled here. In technical terms this situation is called a “Dead Lock”. The pushers will never be able to finish their work in the allocated time frame or accumulate more work that eventually gets to their nerves at the last minute.
“How do we prevent ourselves from being a pusher?
Taking Ownership of the work will help us not to be in the pushers loop.
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
- George Bernard Shaw
When we receive any work we have to carefully check if we can do it alone or if there is anything that really needs help from others. When we refer it to others, we have to make sure that we clearly convey the time frame and our ownership. If other people know our dead lines, there is a less chance for them to ignore it or bounce it back to us. If the other people are not responding, we need to make sure that we follow up with them in order to get it out of the “dead lock” situation.
“Who do you think is the happiest person when the job is done? And who will get most of the credit?”
I think “It’s the one who took the ownership of the job.”
6. Automate it
During the confession of my work day that I discussed in Part-1, I realized that most of the work I do everyday is manual and routine. So, it’s obvious that I don’t get much fun when doing this kind work.
We always need to have a change to get excited about something and that too an effort less one. Our brain always tends to resist the routine and manual work which results in nothing but laziness. In order to overcome this, we need to come up with and implement the ideas to automate all the routine work. Of course, we have to go through some pain when we are brainstorming for the ideas but, once it is done, it’s just as simple as “pressing the button”.
In IT field, virtually anything can be automated. It just needs us to go onto the internet and look for it. We also have to make sure that, we have some auditing mechanism in place in order to track if anything goes wrong.
I will be starting a new section on this blog to discuss the shortcuts and techniques to simplify and automate the IT environment.
I can still hear someone saying “How can we automate ‘pressing the button…?’ ”
If you like my article, please Subscribe to this Feed.
Part-1: How to Overcome Laziness at the Workplace ? – Part 1
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
How to Overcome Laziness at the Workplace? – Part 1
By admin | March 30, 2008
Even though the workplace is a small portion of our life, it could become a major stress creator and spread over all the parts of life unless we know how to deal with it. We should never think of escaping from the work as this thinking process itself is a major source of stress. We should always try to figure out ways that create fun at workplace so that we can always be working at our peak energy levels. The more we contribute to our work the more will be our satisfaction levels but, we have to make sure that we get a lot of fun out of it.
I don’t want to overload you with bundles of information, that too in a single post as it becomes painful for you to read it and ultimately fails our purpose. So, after doing some work, I was successfully able to shrink it into a small set of techniques that would be helpful in getting rid of laziness at the workplace. I am going to discuss only three techniques for each post.
1.Decorate your workplace
What are we mostly excited about through out the year? It has to be Parties, get-togethers, Festivals, birthdays, anniversaries, vacations and so on and so forth. Why? It’s because we know that we will have a lot of fun on these days. We start preparing a week in advance if not a month in advance for these occasions.
Can we imagine a festival or party with out any decorations? I don’t think we can.
Why do we need decorations for all these occasions? I hope we all know the answer.
Decorations create an environment that looks good. When it looks good, it feels good. This means, it creates a fun atmosphere in which everyone can enjoy.
Why not apply the same philosophy at the workplace? Why not decorate our workplace to create a fun environment?
In order to feel good at the workplace you have to keep it as similar to your favorite fun place. It needs to be in the way that makes you feel good. Whenever you get some free time, decorate your workplace with the stuff that you like most. This makes you feel as if you are in your favorite environment.
I like books. So, I decorate my workplace with my favorite books that are neatly arranged like a small library. Few people like garden, they keep a lot of plants in their office area. Few people decorate their surroundings with their family and friends photos. Few others keep paintings. I even have seen people having Lego blocks in their cube or office. I inquired them and I came to know that they either like toys or beautiful colors.
Think if there is anything that like most and try to decorate your work area with it. This will motivate you as well as eliminate the work related stress by creating your favorite environment.
As I said before, when you are at your favorite place, you will never be lazy anymore.
2. Appreciate your work
Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary. — Quote by Margaret Cousins
This is one of my favorite techniques that really changed way I look at myself while I am at work. You can do it after work at the workplace or as soon as you go home after work.
Try to spend about just five minutes with one of your family member explaining what you have done in the office hours. I know it’s quite embarrassing to confess to anyone if you haven’t done any thing useful for the entire day. In this case, you have to start by confessing it to yourself. You wonder how you talk to yourself, right! Use a mirror. I will look in the mirror and explain myself step by step that all I have gone through the day at my workplace for about five minutes.
It’s amazing feeling to know how many great things we have done without even noticing many of them. This is the way how you show some appreciation to what we have done at work so that, we can do it more and more to motivate ourselves.
Another method of doing this is writing them down. Most of the people call it “time log” or “work dairy”. I use the term “Work Appreciation”.
When I started this by talking to myself about my work day, I could see amazing changes started to happen. I started to open up more to myself and realized that, I have done some of the work that is very creative and need to do more like that. I also realized much of the work I have done is routine and manual. What ever it is, now I can clearly see the difference. Once we see the difference, we will be more conscious of what we are doing and always choose the best.
When you know that you are doing the best you will be more satisfied and rewarded as well.
3. Minimize distractions
Most of the times we start a task and it may not be easy to finish it within the time allocated, as we have to go through so many distractions. It could be people who genuinely need your help or people who just want to have a chat or some sticky note hanging at your desk or some e-mail or some website which takes you on long internet tour.
Some times we might need to refer a document in the middle of the task. We start looking for that document and before finding the document, we will get attracted by another document that seems to be more important. We will forget our current task and start working on the newly found document. After this is done, or did I say wrong? During the time you are working on the second task you may come across another interesting document and start working on it and so on and so forth. When clock ticks 5 pm you will realize that the first task you really got to do is not yet done. You will write the first task on the sticky note and put it on your computer screen for your next day. Even though you haven’t purposefully done but you procrastinated.
Next day, I don’t think there will be much change. You will go through the same cycle.
I need not tell you how much this happens on the internet. It is not much difficult to get lost in the oceans of information. Most of the times when I want to find something on the internet, I initially I go to a website and see an attracting image or link and click on the link and when I realize I don’t even know where I started and what I am looking for. I know it’s not our fault. It is the website owner’s job to attract more traffic by using nice-looking images and appealing information and he succeeded in doing his job.
Not only humans, even our computers also get so many interruptions during their software program executions. They are frequently interrupted by other programs and devices such as keyboard/mouse clicks that need the attention of it. Fortunately, the computers have a smart mechanism to get back their main program after attending the interrupted programs and that is the reason why they are not hung most of the times.
I am not saying it is wrong to visit other websites as it is one of the best ways to learn new things but we got to know the way out of the internet loop and get back to work.
A few tips below might help in avoiding distractions.
-
Go through all the documents and try to get rid of the all unneeded stuff. File the needed documents into separate file folders.
-
Be cautious when you go on the internet as there is a great chance to be lost and you might never find your way back home. Task reminders with sound would be helpful up to some extent to get your attention back to main task.
-
When you come across any attractive site on the internet, add the site to your favorites so that you can temporarily postpone it and get back to work. All of these cravings may go away as the time passes. If it is really important website you can always go back to it.
-
Identify who genuinely need help and who wants to just chat. Do not entertain casual talk in the office as this will never end once started. Convey politely that you need get back to work.
-
I recommend the book The 4-Hour Workweek - by Timothy Ferris. This book covers many techniques to avoid distractions at the workplace.
If you like my article, please Subscribe to this Feed.
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »