OK, workplace pro, here's a question for you. What do you do when your desk is always piled high with complex projects, and your phone is constantly ringing, and your e-mail box is ever overflowing with increasingly urgent messages about looming deadlines?
What do you do? You take the day off and go to a Fred Pryor seminar!
Like "Managing Multiple Priorities, Projects & Deadlines," a one-day classroom event where you learn how to "prioritize crucial projects, manage conflicting demands, and master multiple tasks with confidence."
Hey, even if it doesn't work, it gets you away from your desk. Who knows, while you're gone, you could get lucky and your company could go out of business.
Chances are, your desk would still waiting for you at the end of the seminar, but you will have learned a number of theoretically useful tools to help you manage the disaster area that is your job. Or, as the Fred Pryor copywriter breathlessly puts it, "24 Power Pointers That Will Boost Your Productivity NOW!"
If you're hoping that one of these pointers includes learning the skill of invisibility, tough luck. That is apparently the subject of another seminar. Instead, what you get are helpful hints like Power Pointer No. 6 -- "3 decisive steps that prevent others from imposing their priorities on you."
The Pryor people do not reveal these steps, but I think I have a pretty good idea of how to block a management imposter imposing a priority on your puny shoulders. Step No. 1, don't listen. Buy yourself a hearing aid on eBay and tap it frantically when orders are being given. Step No. 2, if you do take on a priority job, mess it up, big-time. Chances are you won't be asked again. Step No. 3, throw a fit. Start shaking and shouting and, as you well know, a little drooling never hurts. Insist on lining your cubical with aluminum foil to ward off listening devices planted by your competitors. Trust me, no one will imposing another priority on you any time soon.
"Master the highly effective divide and conquer method for big projects and long-range goals" is Power Pointer No. 13. Now this is an approach I endorse. All major assignments should be divided into jobs you will ignore completely, jobs you will foist off on someone else, and jobs you will tackle during the summer, when there are no more new episodes of "Gossip Girl."
An organizational classic comes into play in Power Pointer No. 23, in which you are encouraged to "utilize 'to-do' lists to keep you on track and guide you through today, this week, and this year." The trouble with to-do lists is that what you do most is add and edit your to-do's. This chore becomes even more onerous if you are one of those folks who is a slave to their electronic devices, and must spend endless hours making sure the to-do list on your cell phone is synchronized to your desktop, your laptop, your notebook, and your Dick Tracey two-way wrist radio. I say -- save yourself and your typing fingers a lot of hard work and heartbreak. Tell your to-do lists toodleloo.
Utilizing a machine-gun barrage of bullet points in your documents must be another Power Pointer, because the seminar brochure is riddled with them. Just reading the marketing material makes me feel like I'm under siege. Yet, I must admit I'm not sure I want to live unless I can to know the "5 warning signs of danger-point procrastination."
Heck, I had always thought that there was only one danger -- that you'd eventually give up procrastinating and actually do something.
Another irresistible lesson to be learned is how to deal with "desk-cloggers." The only desk-cloggers I know are your telephone and your computer. And come to think of it, when you get rid of these, you pretty much get rid of all the other time-wasters, like telephone calls and e-mails.
Having successfully unclogged my desk, I suppose this is the last time I'll be hearing from the folks at Fred Pryor, unless they also happen to promote their seminars using well-organized carrier pigeons. So, I guess I'll never know "an effective 5-step formula" for getting control of "the most complex, mind-boggling problems."
If you're wasting time trying to solve the complex, mind-boggling problem of why in the world you were hired in the first place, here's an effective 1-step formula that provides an answer to every business question. Just say "I have no idea; you really should ask Fred Pryor."
