I’m amazed at how many work-a-holics there are in the world. Just today I read a blog post about a guy who was aggravated because he’d heard another man say he was just killing time. “How dare he!” the blog author thought as he considered clobbering the other man. “Doesn’t he know that time is precious, and I don’t have any of it? How dare he be unproductive and do nothing!”

The blog author then proceeds to discuss all the things he does and how he as a serious businessman doesn’t even have the time to sleep. His plan? Free up as much time as he can to do what he wants do and go where he wants to go. But to “waste” time or “kill” time? Forget it. I’m afraid this man is on the road to burnout.

Here are my issues with this type of thinking and why I believe sometimes it’s best to, yes, do nothing.

If You Don’t Take a Break, You’ll Burn Out

To live your life never wasting a moment, but always doing something is tough stuff. We all love a hero, and we all love the stories of people who accomplished great things. Those stories and people are inspiring and they push us to do more and be better people. We assume that to be like these people, we have to work harder and be better than the next guy. We believe that we don’t have any time to waste. To some extent, it is true. You don’t want to sit on an idea forever. Ideas don’t create income. Action creates income.

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© Chris for Chris Mower, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: At Work, Relax, Streamline

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Most projects start innocently enough. Parameters are set, goals are defined, and work begins. The fat begins when someone says, “Oh wait, what about this…?” and a new feature is added. Then a little while later it happens again and yet another feature is added. Before too long you’ve got a project that should be 150 pounds weighing in at twice its healthy weight: a whopping 300 pounds. That’s the heavy-weight, out-of-breath division. And now you’re dealing with some unhealthy problems:

• Your project is sluggish, dragging on and on.
• You miss your deadline and it ships late.
• You’ve spent more money than you like and earned less than you wanted.
• You’ve added a lot of extra fat that’s hard to shed.

Imagine yourself at twice the weight you should be. I’m already a chunky dude… all of a sudden I can’t get out the door. Feeling panicked? That wouldn’t be so uncommon. Those bloated projects create panic in lots of people. So now the goal is to rescue the project and trim off the fat. Do this and watch its metabolism increase–almost overnight!

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© Chris for Chris Mower, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: How To, Streamline

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There’s always room for process improvement, especially in corporate America. Even well-oiled machines need tweaking to keep them running smoothly. Comcast, my home telephone provider–yes, I said home phone, not cell phone (and yes, they still exist)–made changes to their customer’s online account management system. This change inadvertently locked my online account keeping me from accessing my monthly bills which took 4 different customer support sessions and supreme patience to fix. During the last session the support rep discovered a way for me to re-access my account. This fix required him to change my password.

Reunited with my online identity, I changed my password, email, secret question, and secret question’s answer away from factory settings. Two weeks later I received 6 Comcast snail mail letters. I opened them thinking their mail system probably choked and spit me out 6 identical letters. Nope.

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© Chris for Chris Mower, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Streamline, User Friendly, Utilities

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