The Secondary Principle of
Clergy tend to be excellent procrastinators. Have you ever done this?
A piece of mail comes in. You look at it. You're unsure of what to do with it, so you place it on your desk to the left. You do other stuff. Later on, you notice the envelope. You look at it. You're unsure of what do do with it, so you place it on your desk to the right. And so on, until eventually you place it where it falls off the back of the desk into a nowhere land where it is completely lost. The diocesan secretary calls two months later for the list she's been waiting for. You can't remember what happened to it...
I'm sure that's never happened to you. The only way to avoid this is to deal with everything as it comes across your desk. That dosen't mean you have to do the action required by the item, it means you have to place it in the workflow in the proper place now so that it can be dealt with at the proper time. This takes a lot of discipline, and is sometimes hard to implement. You will end up with piles on your desk from time to time. Remember, forgiveness is divine.
A piece of mail comes in. You look at it. You're unsure of what to do with it, so you place it on your desk to the left. You do other stuff. Later on, you notice the envelope. You look at it. You're unsure of what do do with it, so you place it on your desk to the right. And so on, until eventually you place it where it falls off the back of the desk into a nowhere land where it is completely lost. The diocesan secretary calls two months later for the list she's been waiting for. You can't remember what happened to it...
I'm sure that's never happened to you. The only way to avoid this is to deal with everything as it comes across your desk. That dosen't mean you have to do the action required by the item, it means you have to place it in the workflow in the proper place now so that it can be dealt with at the proper time. This takes a lot of discipline, and is sometimes hard to implement. You will end up with piles on your desk from time to time. Remember, forgiveness is divine.
Tools used to Implement this Principle
- The Recipies control the order in which we deal with things.
- The Master Planner is where we create tasks and control the order of our workflow.
- The Calendar is where we put timed events.
- The Toaster is where we put things we want to deal with at a later date or have delegated.
- The Fridge and Deep Freeze is where we file supporting information and reference materials.
