Time Management - Marc Mancini
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44<br />
<strong>Time</strong> <strong>Management</strong><br />
Combating Perfectionism<br />
Three simple questions should help you decide whether<br />
your approach to a task is too “perfectionist”:<br />
1. Is the payoff worth the effort you’re putting into it?<br />
2. Is there actually a simpler, less time-consuming way to do it?<br />
3. Are you neglecting other projects in order to make this project<br />
“perfect”?<br />
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you’re probably<br />
exerting more effort than the project either requires or deserves.<br />
sonality traits, they can manifest themselves in very different<br />
situations. If, for example, you tend to fear failure and you procrastinate<br />
largely for that reason, you’ll procrastinate on any<br />
task at which you might fear that you’ll fail.<br />
If you answer yes to any of the following questions, you may<br />
have the tendency to procrastinate embedded in your personality:<br />
• While in school, did you usually cram before a test?<br />
• Do you often put off returning a call to someone you<br />
don’t like, even if it’s important?<br />
• Do youb wait until you have dental problems to see your<br />
dentist?<br />
• Have you had an unintentional late finance charge in the<br />
last three months?<br />
• Do you wait until a deadline looms before beginning<br />
important projects?<br />
To defeat procrastination you need to put considerable energy<br />
into behavior change. Sound impossible? It’s not. A number<br />
of proven and clear strategies can enable you to effect genuine<br />
and lasting change.<br />
External Forces<br />
Even if you usually don’t procrastinate, your environment can<br />
impose procrastination on you. Figure 4-1 gives, in the clear<br />
unshaded boxes, the four typical external reasons for procrastination.<br />
This is not to say that psychological reasons aren’t<br />
involved. There must be some. But unpleasant or overwhelming