Can You Get Certified For Procrastination?

Lest any writers think our profession has the market cornered on procrastination, we’re reminded that workers in any field can fall into this nasty trap.

TechRepublic offers a 10-part (well…actually…9-part) crash course in mastering the art of procrastination. Lessons include:

1. Learning what procrastination means.
2. Knowing the history of the art.
3. Avoiding task prioritization.
4. Fostering short attention spans.
5. Find something infinitely more fun to do.
6. Drag your colleagues into meeting hell.
7. Master the companion art of perfectionism
8. Create delays just because you can.
9. Master the other companion art — disorganization.

Sadly, this rings too true as I’ve recently been reminded that even a highly organized majority can be brought to its knees by a procrastinating minority — especially if they’re exceptionally talented at #3 and #7.

For fun, print this course out and share it with your colleagues and see how much time it takes to match up discussion points with team members. You could easily burn a day looking up “procrastination” in the online dictionaries, reading about the psychological reasons for procrastination on Wikipedia, and tracking down books that claim to cure procrastination for good.

I mean, after all, that deadline for noon on Friday isn’t that important…