Stop lighting your own house on fire. Every time you find yourself dealing with a fire (emergency or crisis) in your work, remember it was lit with your own match. In fact, while you are fighting that blaze, I bet one or more people have asked you for your time to do something or you have put off something on your todo list.
We justify this by saying fighting this fire is more important than a perceived unimportant request that comes up. We think we can delay the request and deal with it later, but we often forget to do so. That request is the fuel for your next fire. You just don’t realize it. The minute you put it off and don’t deal with it, you have authorized someone to light a match and drop it on the gasoline. *POOF* Now you are surrounded by fires everywhere. It’s not long until all you can do is fight fires.
This madness will only stop when you no longer provide an ignition source. Break the cycle. Stop putting off today’s requests and start preventing tomorrow’s fires.
More from Derek Neighbors
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- Civic Duty: Respond to the Census
- Two Lessons to Survive Your Work and Get Things Done
- Can We Get Over It?
- So You Think You Have It Rough?
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