It is worth doing well or it has to be done?

Read time is approximately 2 minutes

My mother was adamant in teaching my sisters and I, “If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.” My advisor at the University of Wyoming was just as adamant about, “It doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to be done.”

So how do we know which piece of advice to employ? Well, just like both of these people who influenced my life used to say in response to several of my questions, “It depends.”

 “It depends” is how I find the time management balance in my life…some projects such as a resume fall mainly into the “do it well” category. Other projects such as a blog post (or a dissertation it turns out) fall mainly into the “has to be done” category. Obviously, the resume has to be done before the prospective job is filled or it won’t matter how well it is done and obviously, the blog has to be done as well as possible or readers will stop reading. But by-and-large, different projects fall under different categories and we need to decide which project will best be served by which school of advice: do it well, have it done, or somewhere in the grey area between.

Dr.Joseph Ferrari has identified three different types of procrastinators who fall into those three different categories: do it well, has to be done, or grey area between.  We might find it helpful to know what kind of a procrastinator we are (and we all procrastinate sometimes) and why we might be procrastinating.

Ferrari has designed a flowchart infographic describing three types of time wasters. Sometimes just knowing why we do what we do helps us avoid regrettable behaviors. Follow the flowchart to see what best describes your traits in most projects.

Try the helpful tip at the bottom of the flowchart for a couple of weeks. Post a comment on the end of the blog to let the rest of us know into what category you fall, if the tip has helped, or if this whole exercise fails to match your life experience.

Next post we’ll talk about an important strategy for the beginning of a school year and in subsequent posts we’ll talk more about tips for avoiding procrastination and managing time better.