Below is Part 1 of a 3-Part article designed to help IT and database professionals stay on top of their game in an ever-changing trade. Part 1 and 2 describes examples of how we inadvertently make excuses for our lack of progress in certain areas of our careers.
Part 3 offers several steps toward creating ‘No Excuse Zones” in our home, office and thinking. For more examples that fit your specific work environment, please feel free to contact [email protected]
Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – Corporate Exit Strategist for the blooming entrepreneur – and I am a business and life coach that specializes in Time Management, Project management training and work-life balance strategies. Over the recent weeks, I have met with several clients that got trapped in the ‘blame game’. Oh, I’m not saying they were intentionally blaming other people or external circumstances for their current situation. But they were relinquishing responsibility and ownership to feel better about their current lack of progress. Therefore, today I am introducing the idea of creating “No Excuse Zones” in your home, work and life.
We all have ‘excuses’ as part of our normal, default speaking and thinking patterns. It’s normal. It’s human. We often entertain ourselves with stories of how we got to where we ‘don’t want to be’. We do not readily acknowledge these stories as ‘excuses’ or blaming something or someone external to ourselves for our predicament; we’re simply ‘explaining’ ourselves. But the longer we stay in the ‘explaining’ stage of the current situation; the longer we are stalled and not making forward progress.
Take these IT and home situations:
My task was to contact 3 hospitals to collect meaningful metrics on these five database features. Only one hospital has responded on only one database features. I am late with this project and don’t know how to proceed.
I have to review these database reference books and install these new applications, but I have any time. My other two projects are late; therefore, I can’t take the time to catch up on my other to-do lists and application training. It’s just that I have had to put this off because there were other things happening in my life
I don’t think I can get it done by Wednesday because I’m waiting on a routine from the California department. They have been unresponsive to my request for status. So, I’m stuck on my project.
I continually get interrupted at work and am constantly called into useless meeting. I never have time for real work.
I need to create a work-flow from the meeting we just had. But the facilitator was so antagonistic and rude, that I was unable to ask my clarifying questions. I don’t have enough information to complete the work-flow chart. And the facilitator doesn’t have the patience or time to help me fill in the blanks.
At first glance, these may look like ‘explanations’ and not excuses. In Part 2, we will detail each example to show how we could have better managed the situation.
If you are interested in more detail professional coaching or a professional coach to help you stay on target with those goals, please consider one-on-one coaching sessions to propel you forward faster.
