Excuses
Ninety percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
I really don’t wanna do it. I am too busy. It will take too much time. It isn’t worth it. No one will care if I do it or not. How often have you heard these excuses? Many times I am sure and sometimes or maybe a lot of times these things are coming out of your mouth.
We are good at making excuses for not doing something or for not getting something done. If we took the same amount of time and effort to just do it, it would be done, no problem. And sometimes others did care about it and were disappointed by us and our “I don’t wanna do it” attitude.
I am sure you are put off by the excuse makers. They promise all sorts of things, but then find a way or reason not to come through. I have an acquaintance much like that. Great guy. Fun to be with and have a beer and tell stories. But when it comes to being dependable to get something done, forget it. Something always comes up and he promises next time will be different. It isn’t. So I just stopped counting on him.
You should do the same. Realize who is dependable and work with them. The others are good company, so leave it like that.
But, if you are one of those excuse makers, you need to make some changes. Otherwise you will be like my acquaintance, someone to have a beer with and joke around, but not someone to depend on and be serious about. That means you too. Nothing is worse than when you cannot depend on yourself to get things done because you always have an excuse why you cannot.
If you are like that here are some things to do in order to change that:
· Take responsibility and accountability for yourself and your actions — As mentioned previously, you want to deal with people who are true to their word. They are both responsible for what they say and accountable for what they do or do not do.
You need to hold yourself to the same standard that you are holding others to. While you can always find others to replace those who are not responsible or accountable, you cannot do that to yourself.
At the end of the day, what gets done is entirely up to you. Therefore, you need to take charge and stop making excuses for not getting things done.
· Shift your attitude — This goes along with accountability and responsibility. Your attitude towards these things and yourself is what gets things done.
Certain things really aren’t that important and maybe you shouldn’t concern yourself with them. But if they are, you need to make sure that they get done. And that is a matter of attitude.
If nothing is important, you are kidding yourself. The key is to differentiate what is and isn’t and make sure what is gets taken care of.
· Prioritize — Following along with this, prioritizing things is important. Having a jumbled mess of things to do, means you may spend too much time on things that really do not matter.
If that is the case, no wonder you make excuses for not doing things or getting things done. You are indeed wasting your time and so it is easy to do nothing because you really do not care.
Prioritizing and working on the important things is satisfying and you will get a sense of accomplishment. And the non-important stuff can either lapse or wait for another day and time.
· Commit and do — Once you prioritize, you must then act. Having a plan is not the end game. Getting things done is.
Some people stop at prioritizing and then wonder why problems are arising. It is up to you to take control and actually work on the important things. If you do not, it is no wonder when others also do not. Unless you have a dedicated partner who keeps at you to get things done, it is entirely up to you.
Even if your partner is a nudge, at some point they too will get tired of your excuse making. That can lead to other problems as they may decide to move on from you.
· Stop overthinking things — The more complicated we make things, the less we want to do them. That leads to spending time working on how to not do something rather than just doing it and getting it done.
There are things in our lives we would rather not do. Sometimes we can avoid or skip them. Other times though they need to get done. Instead of thinking the worst, imagine how relieved you will be when it is over and then do it.
· Set realistic goals — Too often we set unrealistic goals that may take forever to get done and the results are less than satisfying. There is an old saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time.”
By setting manageable and realistic goals and breaking them into pieces that are not overwhelming, the urge to not do anything and excuse it away will diminish.
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Now that you have ways to overcome the urge to not do things, get to it. If you spend the time dreading something and thinking of ways to avoid doing it by just getting it done, you will have achieved what you wanted to and the evil thing no longer needs to be addressed. And you have accomplished something. Sometimes doing something you really didn’t want to is a bigger accomplishment than doing what you love to do.
The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, that’s the day you start to the top.
By doing so, you will not get in the syndrome of making more and more excuses about doing things until there is nothing you want to do. And you can now be glad you are not one of those folks you cannot count on to get things done.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter H. Christian was a founding partner and president of espi, a business consulting firm in Northeastern PA. Previously he was an Executive at Crayola Corporation. He has worked with 300+ clients in business development, profit improvement, operations, IS selection and implementation, and Project Management. He has 40+ years of experience in strategic and facility planning, CI, lean, and supply chain. He has helped companies to realize millions of dollars in cost reductions and profit improvements adding and retaining thousands of jobs. He has authored the Amazon bestselling business books, “What About the Vermin Problem?” and “Influences and Influencers” (4 out of 4 star review on Online Bookclub) and is published in a variety of professional magazines. He is most appreciative of Dr. Rodney Ridley and Donald Schalk of the O’Pake Institute, Alvernia University for their support in allowing him to teach this important course
