Happy New Year!
Here I am in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. This show is one of my favorites and I have lots to do here. It’s Wednesday, pre-dawn and I thought, maybe you’d find my lesson interesting. I have no prepared blog that will offer insight to you about running your business.
How did this happen, me with no blog on the day of the delivery? After all, I have a whole list of topics to write about on my desk. I’m sure there were many times I could have found a half hour to write a blog over the entire Holiday Season. I certainly watched my share of bowl games. Yet I did not.
It’s not like CES all of a sudden appeared on my calendar. I’ve known about it for weeks. It’s not like I forgot that there would be a Wednesday while I was out of town. It’s not like I don’t have “blog” on my marketing calendar.
Yep. When I write about something I already know, it doesn’t take all that long. It’s easy actually (coming from the guy who never had an English class he didn’t hate). I can stack up a bunch of them and even schedule them all for delivery weeks ahead of time. Yet, I did not. But, for some reason, I continued to think I would do it later. I certainly did a bunch of much less important stuff over the month prior, but, chose not to write for a few hours.
Nope, none of that. What is it then – PROCRASTINATION.
So my lesson is to stop putting off to tomorrow what can be done today. It didn’t do me much good to write blog on my calendar. I needed to choose the topic and write it. It’s one thing to put it on a calendar (which my calendar has “BLOG”, just not what the topic is), and as I’m proving to myself and sharing with you, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to actually do it.
Like the cartoons in your newspaper (if you still get a newspaper), prepare in advance. Construct your business to allow you to work today on what is further over the horizon – DO IT. How else can you be available for the interesting stuff that “comes up” along the way? Even at that, we all have lapses. The ultimate question is “what are you going to DO about it”?
