Tips from a Hard Working Slacker

Okay, I’ve been inspired to write an article about things you can do to make sure that you not only get your work done, but doing it in a way where you don’t stress yourself out.

Since high school, I’ve been pretty good doing ‘just enough’ to get by. Now, by no means I am I proud of my self-proclaimed ’slacker’ title, but I can honestly say that because of this unusual skill, I get a lot of work done.

Here is my thought, I do not like to do any more work than I have to. It doesn’t mean that I do incomplete work nor does it mean that I do sub-par work, I just do the work so that it doesn’t have to be done twice. Who likes to make revisions on a task that could have been completed on the first time? Not only do you look foolish for submitting work you thought was done, but you end up giving yourself more work.

In addition, I setup goals accordingly. Often, people go into work with very very ambitious goals. Now, this is a great quality to share with your manager, but if you frequently fail at your goals because they are too ambitious you might be doing yourself more harm than good. Try and set realistic goals and make sure that you stick to your schedule.

A Slacker’s Tips:

Do the work correctly the first time. Heck, ask questions so that it gives you the ability to work on something and finish it the first time.
Schedule you work and stick to it. Don’t answer an incoming email just because it’s there. Schedule a time and stick to it.
Do not give other people work that you could have finished. This is hard to explain, but if you know that the work you are doing will cause problems for someone else, please discuss it with them first. Or else you will be wasting both of your time.
Leave a good part of your day for ‘unscheduled’ work. Setup a time in your day for ‘free work time’ where if your manager tells you he has something important he needs from you, you can pop it into that slot and save the day. (Hidden reward: if you have an easy day, go ahead and start researching your next purchase on Amazon.)
Be an over-achieving team player. Okay, everyone knows that you work hard. But keeping to yourself and not joining in on water-cooler conversations about the current deadlines on hand doesn’t show your ‘team work’ attitude. So what your part is easy and you can breeze through it, if the conversation is about how difficult, share your story in an non-threatening way.
- Something like “I know what you mean Paul, I had similar trouble with that one line of code. I had to step away from it for an hour before I could figure what was wrong.” And NOT like “You still aren’t done yet Paul? I’m already working on my football picks, I hope you get a chance to submit your picks, you were last place last week.”

There are a lot more little things you can do, so that you can be the most efficient slacker at work. But I’ll save that for next time.