Confession

I do not know why other people confess. I am here to confess my disorganized behavior hoping that this blog post will remind me of the stressful moment, root cause of the problem and help me to minimize such unnecessary stress.

I almost got heart attack today due to my disorganized tasks management. If I may refer to Steven Covey’s Quadrants, I allowed an item under Quadrant II to move to Quadrant I. This means that I allowed an important/not urgent task to become important/ urgent one (also means that I created a crisis) because I did not put first things first. I failed to prioritize the important tasks.

I failed to work on an issue until I received an email for the deadline. I had 36 hours to react on it. It could have been closed if everything went smooth. But I didn’t have allowance for errors. I can guarantee my performance as I knew the importance of completing this particular task but it was just another piece of paper for people who also need to work on it. As I worried, things went wrong. Anxiety has consumed one afternoon and huge amount of energy from me. With shame for bad time management, stress and worries for completing the task in time, I ran around for remedy. Fortunately, I managed to fix the problem.

In the past, I could have been happy for pushing myself to get the job done. But in total truth, I was the one who allowed the hassle happened in the first place. There are far too many distractions in life. Things can be managed only if we put full concentration on it. Now with this reflective learning, I pledge to practice the followings on a weekly basis.
1. Prioritize the tasks (both for home, work and after-work activities)
2. Allocate time to complete the important tasks
3. Handle one issue at a time
4. Take note possible causes of not completing important tasks – not noticing there is something important to do, forgetting to prioritize the tasks, lose track while doing the job, stuck at one step because do not know how to overcome that
5. Remember to allocate time for correcting errors if any

I really hope this blog post reminds me of my stressful evening and help me to minimize such unnecessary anxiety.