4-21-10 Back Pocket

I was visiting with one of my fellow retirees at the golf course the other day. I’m about 1 year into retirement -- he’s about 3 years into it. As we exchanged pleasantries, I asked him how he was liking retirement. His answer? “I’m so glad that golf season is finally here, I’ve been bored to death.” My reaction was a big HUH? How the heck is that possible?! Hard for me to imagine at this point. But it did get me to thinking about boredom in general, and then more specifically, boredom at work.

No matter how busy you are on any given day (or week, or month!), you will have some downtimes at work. Times where there frankly just isn’t much going on. In the aerospace industry, that can be the week or two before/after the Christmas holiday shutdown. Or if you are working with the European aerospace industry, that could be during the traditional vacation month of August. The point is, every industry has its slow times throughout the year.

So, you come into work one day and you find yourself looking around and thinking, “what in the heck am I going to do with myself all day?”

That’s why I always made sure that I had an ongoing back pocket list of things to do. There are always going to be those tasks that never seem to quite make it to the top of the to do list in the normal course of business. They are tasks that likely need to be done, but don’t have the same urgency as your normal day-to-day activities. Those are the things that you need to trot out during the slow times.

Now I know that most time management experts would tell you that if something never really makes it to the top of the to do list, it is likely something that really doesn’t need to be done. I contend they are wrong. These are tasks that need to be done -- sometime.

So what kind of tasks should be on your back pocket to do list? For me? It was usually a pretty diverse list. Things like: cleaning out paper files, cleaning out email files, catching up on reading, assessing and then rewriting policies, updating templates, etc. I’m sure that your list is equally as diverse.

And the payoff? You will find that you end up having a pretty productive day(s) despite the initial flush of boredom. And….. You end up accomplishing some languishing tasks that really do need to be done.

Cheers!