delay action for guaranteed results

What’s a guaranteed way to make little to no progress? Procrastinate.

This blog focuses on positive applications of the Pareto Principle. It’s exciting and motivating to think about the one lever that can move the world in the direction you’d like. Unfortunately, as easy as some of these tools are to apply in your favor, some tools are easier to apply against you. Worse, still, you apply these instruments against yourself. Procrastination is one of these.

Procrastination is the delay of action. If you told someone to wait to act, it could be interpreted as patience. Isn’t patience a virtue? Yeah, that’s one of the tricks of procrastination. While procrastinating you’re delaying action on high value endeavors and looking for instant gratification through low value activities. Procrastination is a highly leveraged version of the 80/20 rule. Your delay of the right action makes the result you want impossible. Now stop procrastinating and go do the right act for you right now.

if you question what you see, get a second opinion

The macro buttons I normally used in an Excel add-in disappeared one day. I tried a number of fixes before reaching out to a colleague. Through investigation the mystery was solved. It appears the UI was changed from one release to the next. Confirming the change with someone else provided the critical insight to move forward with the process. An external sanity check was the critical help to move my work forward.

don't focus on the finish line, put one foot in front of the other

I'm super tired today due to poor sleep, but I just kept doing one more thing. It turned into a highly productive day. One step can turn into ten by just thinking about one step at a time. Whether exhausted, demoralized, or just unclear on direction, taking the next step in front of you and not thinking about the whole project can put you further down the path than you expected at the end of the day.

Don't spin your wheels, find traction

I couldn’t find a solution to a problem in any of the available resources. I recorded my questions and moved on. Not long after my mentor was able to quickly answer several questions and provide context. Time saved. More learned. Momentum and energy retained.