Three Keys For Successful Slackers

This is a guest post from Stephen Smith

You may have heard that it’s easy to be a slacker, but it is not as easy as they think. If you are not careful you can go from slacker to loser in a hurry. And no one wants that! Here are five three simple characteristics of a successful slacker manager, which you can put into practice without too much effort at all.

1. Clear Thinking

When was that last time you sat down and did some serious thinking? I mean real, honest-to-goodness thinking. Without the radio on, or in front of the TV, no e-mail alerts or ringing phone or any of the typical distractions that create your normal operating state of partial attention.

Take some time for yourself, in fact, set an appointment to get away from those distractions and do some clear thinking about your goals, your responsibilities, your aspirations, your current status. Go out to the parking lot and sit in your car if you have to, but sit down and do it. Take a pen and a notebook with you, you’ll need it for the second key.

2. Write It Down

If you do not write down the results of your thinking, you will very likely forget them. As soon as you get hungry or your boss calls with some sort of idiot emergency all of your well-thought-out plans and ideas will vanish into the dark corners of your mind. Once these thoughts disappear, you will have a heck of a time rooting them out again.

Once your ideas have been written down, you can do two really useful things with them:

1. First, you can file them away safely, to be retrieved when you need them.
2. Second, you can look at them over and over, and expand on them.

Written ideas can be turned into goals, which can be expanded into plans (do you see where this is going?). Writing a detailed plan allows you to create actions steps that you can execute, one after the other, in order to reach your goal.

3. Do Something

Just because you are a slacker does not mean that you get to sit there and take up space. You have to do something to justify that paycheck. So pull out your written plan and do something on that list. Actually doing anything on your list will take you one step closer to fulfilling that goal. Do one more thing tomorrow and you’ve got a trend. Keep on doing just one thing at a time and before you know it, you are done.

There you have it, the three keys to success: Think, Write, Do. Could it be any easier? Now get going!

Stephen Smith is the editor of Productivity in Context where he teaches people how to use basic tools and simple practices for taking control of their workflow situation, practical ways of being more productive at work and at home.

These practices are designed to give you more time to do the things that matter to you!